Friday night fun at the Arizona State Fair, October 22, 2004. |
C'mon, Car Eleven, take it back again and back that limey green and grimy old sedan across the muddy field and lay it into Cheez-e-Puff -- and make it rough! That dent's enough to strip his tire, steer him off in sparks of fire -- fizzle-flash! Let off the gas and go again! You'll do him in! This time, you're sure to break him -- hit his bumper-bending pressure points and hammer-holds -- get all those places meant to make strategic creases curdle in his skin -- direct his dented fuchsia flats and spray can mattes, extended pipes and hoodpin whirly-gigs toward the others' doors -- they're begging STOP in red and gold as crewmen cringe, their welding torches strewn across the scattered lot with travel trailors, radiator spares, and forklift loaders there to straighten crumpled plates exposed by pushers, crushers, crashers, smashers, bashers, smoking wrecks, jalopies, resurrected junkers, clunkers summoned up from fragments of a muffler shop mechanic's dizzy dream... I watch their final passes, car by car enduring punishments, intentional and random, giving damage, taking tolls, and one by one, they roll to rest as Homer Simpson, Bob the Sponge, and Mottled Rocket all surrender patriotic waves to Number Eighty-Six! O, cultured warriors of the fair, all hail the victor, Eighty-Six, the Cutlass king -- the last to stand, the greatest mauler of them all -- until tomorrow, when the wagons start their engines and the war begins again. |