Bel Air & Beyond

My parents bought it in Alamogordo,
the '56 Chevrolet Bel Air. Bright & new.
A big purchase, maybe two grand.
Two-toned, Laurel Green & Crocus Yellow,
a 'Streamline' two-door V-8 engine,
Jet Age rocket on the hood, a gleaming grille.

Dinah Shore urged us in her Southern drawl
to 'see the USA' but Mother didn't drive
& Dad mostly drove to work at Holloman
though he'd sometimes take us to White Sands
where my sister & I ran barefoot in circles
& cupped gleaming gypsum in our hands.

Back in LA when my dad bought his forest
green Caddie, the Bel Air became my first car.
I drove it up the 405 to college, my carpool
packed six deep, someone talking basketball,
John Wooden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or reading
an essay on Joyce or a poem aloud.

When the Bel Air went kaput,
I was heading to Berkeley. My dad underwrote
a '68 Mercury Cougar. I drove it off the lot
to my boyfriend's place in Silver Lake.
Next day, the sporty Cougar wouldn’t start.
At a gas station off Rampart

the mechanic laughed. F.O.R.D.
That stands for Fix Or Repair Daily.
For years, I had to raise the hood & fiddle
with the carburetor, adjust the choke.
Sometimes the car would sputter, stall.
That day I was lucky—just out of gas.

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Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. For some years, she was a teacher and counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.