Thanks to Cargo contributor Daniel Eastman, for Cargo Lit’s first ever SoundCloud edition!
Check out Dan’s reading of his prose poem, “U-Haul Truck,” up now on SoundCloud. Miss a word? Scroll down to read below.
U-Haul Truck
She had her ashy, chapped heels up on the dashboard of the U-Haul truck. She had slipped her torn, tattered Chuck Taylors on the floor of the U-Haul truck. Olive-toned, tatted up, bicycle thighs rode high in the August breeze of the U-Haul truck. Skin-deep symbols of self-expression extended from her knees to her feet in a U-Haul truck. Me with my stained plain white tee and cargo shorts in the driver’s seat of a U-Haul truck. Bare legs sweated and stuck to pleather interior of a U-Haul truck. Unseen were the forever marks we gave one another in a U-Haul truck. It was an older model, boxy with low-throttle, no CD player, no adapter, just a burned-out tuner, only static between the two of us, in a U-Haul truck. Oh, the radio silence of a U-Haul truck. Man, six hours is a long way with nothing to say to an ex-friend and an old flame in a U-Haul truck. Former consorts, now nonconcentric, found a means to their ending in a U-Haul truck.We had packed and strapped our belongings in the back, locked down that ratcheted latch of a U-Haul truck. She had always owned more, I noted morosely–collections of books, mostly unread, records, and ephemera–in the U-Haul truck. I, on the other hand, had my own motives, always ready to go without notice, just a stack of clothes and a bag to tote it in a U-Haul truck. And now it’s her and me and these catalytic rumblings, refusing to be muffled in a U-Haul truck. That summer was so hot, man, the heat was oppressive, I was running a temper, I was hotheaded, I was aggressive, in a U-Haul truck. I gripped fistfuls of steering wheel and my tanned knuckles turned bleach white in a U-Haul truck.I kept turning to speak, seeking something to say, I’m not looking for a do-over but there’s no excuse for a cold shoulder in a U-Haul truck. We had hatchets to exhume and ice to break, in a U-Haul truck. Something about the way nothing brings people together like shared pain in a U-Haul truck. Like abandoning a shared home and heading down opposite roads in the same U-Haul truck. We are separate and we are together. A languid drive had begun under a leonine late-August sun in a U-Haul truck. Three hundred and sixty minutes matched the miles of muted mouths and dials in a U-Haul truck.
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