I just wanted to ride the thing, not toil
curbside, wrenching on a stripped-out bolt –
bowing on blacktop, pledged to a mystery cult
of grimy devotion – when it broke, and tranny oil
loosed down my arm, warm, gloving my wrist
in metamorphic ooze, that whiff of hell
spun through her gears, a dirty Zinfandel
of shifting struggle, and I could taste the schist, 
the underworlds in her. To keep it running – 
this iron mistress weeping from her seals –
it’s steady work: but paid off in delight
when her frame shimmies between the legs, gunning
the empty highway in black unspooling night,
and she surges, takes me with her over the hills.

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