Poem of the Week

People in Cars

Anna Ohara

Sometimes I forget cars are people
headed someplace and not soft candy
in a steel wrapper—

in LA, say, where her car bakes
while we BBQ in Koreatown.
She was my lover
now she orders two meats and a lager
to split, but there come a peck
of pickles in dishes like boils
on a cheek, and we eat them all.

Curbside, she says she likes the hell
of a car left sitting. Sticky plastic
under glass-sharp sunshine—she sits in it
as long as she can stand. Crazy!

I know she drives the way a fish
in water swims—I mean perfectly
mindless. In the rearview, her blushes
are made of blood, I remember.

Anna Ohara was born in Tokyo and raised on the US coasts. She earned a BA from Tufts University and an MFA from the University of New Hampshire. She lives in New England.
Originally published:
October 6, 2021

Featured

The Shapes of Grief

Witnessing the unbearable
Christina Sharpe

Writing in Pictures

Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature
Chris Ware

Garth Greenwell

The novelist on writing about the body in crisis
Meghan O’Rourke

You Might Also Like

Poem of the Week

The Horns of Moses

Nicholas Friedman

Poem of the Week

The Math Campers

Dan Chiasson

Poem of the Week

There is An Intimacy

Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Newsletter

Sign up for The Yale Review newsletter and keep up with news, events, and more.