Self-Driving

Laura Marris

when a man has selected himself to live longest of all

there will still be a fleet of Cadillacs to come for him in the night
self-driving from their garage
deep in the Comeback City, their sleek forms sailing
through intersections where the red hands blink—

tonight they carry plates
to the outdoor table in the empty cone
of the porchlight

a single moth in the porchlight

when the sky at four in the morning
begins to feel dishonest
remember the scenes of carnage
were scenes of abundance—
the highbeams bursting a cloud of insects
and later, the splatter everywhere, the bucket, the squeegee, the streaks—

you could say it was harmless, not this

uneasy lack of wings

Laura Marris is a writer and translator. Her poems have appeared in Washington Square Review, The Cortland Review, The Volta, and elsewhere. She is a MacDowell Colony fellow and a winner of the Daniel Varoujan Prize. She teaches poetry at Boston University, where she serves as the Director of the Favorite Poem Project.