JESSICA FISCHOFF
AN '82 NISSAN
My first car was shared with my mother,
A 20-year-old grey station wagon whose trunk wouldn’t open,
Whose air conditioning was broken,
Whose driver side window didn’t lower,
Whose radio only played AM stations.
She never did get a name,
But she talked to us in a fused British accent
Or one that resembled no place at all.
“Fuel level is low.”
“Right door is open.”
She knew things even we didn’t know.
She had a keypad lock that made her
seem more ours, a secret we shared only with her,
which allowed us to forgive the un-opening trunk
the un-blowing air and the near-defeat
of everything that she was.
We regret that we never named her.
We think she would have liked that.
A FALLING STAR
I threatened the sun. I called her a liar
She told the earth it could not go on without her,
I called for revolution, and
She pushed me out the darkness that exiled her.
What you’ve been taught to see as streamers and starlight
Is really a dying death.
Once, the moon called her vain, and
The merciless sun tore out her eyes
Leaving blind craters behind.
These are not the stories you want
For your children, but they are real.
Do you remember watching me fall?
Wanting and wishing
As I became nothing?
Do you remember?
Jessica Fischoff graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in English and Journalism and went on to the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at The University of Pittsburgh. Jessica's poems have been published in The Saint Katherine Review and other journals.