Collision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Barbara Daniels

on at first about how worried I’ ve been for her; I wouldn ’t want to drive her away. I haven ’t met too many people I can really talk to yet in Trenton and Alva sure would be a sight for sore eyes.

“You got anything worth eating in this place?” That would be her idea of a “Well, hello to you

too. ”

But sure she ’ll be hungry. Milan, Ohio ’ s a long way from Trenton. Not just in miles but as to a whole life, I’d like to tell Alva. Here you ’ ve got Formicaboothed diners and traffic circles, guys in hoody sweatshirts coming off a night shift road crew out Route 1, coming in for a cup of coffee black, andashotasyou can serve it. At the counter of the Oasis they ’ re like as not to be sitting next to some hotshot MBA with his first job up there in the State House, his suit jacket shoulder right up against that construction worker ’ s shoulder and him asking for a skinny latte. Better make that decaf, the hotshot kids always say here in Trenton. “As opposed to?” Alva will say. She hates when I presume to know a place I don ’t. As opposed to how I see Milan: lily white, cream and two sugars and Alva crazy enough to think she fits right in, her with her fire engine dye job and those stilettos she always wears when she ’ s serving anything with three olives in a stem glass to a regular. When I tell her my picture, Alva will say, “Freya, I swear you have become a cynic since you came north. You lacking sunshine or just sad you went missing the Barcalounger salesmen in February?” In no time at all she ’ll have me laughing as she ’ s spinning the scene: all that polyester in light blue and who knows how many hair pieces sliding further and further with each round of drinks. “Stop it before I pee myself, ” I will have to say. I’ll be laughing but inside I’ll feel a little sad, thinking my way back to all those smoky blue nights at Coltrane ’ s.

A bar in Fort Myers is a long way from a diner in Trenton. I’ m missing Alva, missed her the moment she went back to serving martinis and left me here to serve up two eggs, scrambled, but keep them dry and ryetoast, jelly, nobutter.

Trenton ’ s even a long way from the Trenton I remember when I was a kid, the place my grandfather cheated on my grandmother for twenty-two years, the place where any self-respecting diner customer never met a cholesterol he wouldn ’t shove in his face.

I pull into the mobile home park—no rental cars with Ohio plates in sight— and I’ m sad to say no lights on in my unit. Alva ’ s out there somewhere and who might that be driving the get-away car? Alva ’ s crisscrossing the country leaving her mark in state after state. Claiming my heritage, she calls it. I’ m unlocking the door and getting set for a quiet night, all the lives I’ ve left behind me spooling out over highways—Pennsylvania Turnpike to the Ohio Tollway, or straight down 95 to Florida. All the lives I’ ve left behind.

“Cut the violins and shit, Freya. ” I hear that husky smoker ’ s voice in my head. I pick up the phone and dial a number more familiar than my own.

Collision

by Barbara Daniels

I myselfsee the car crashas a tremendous sexualevent really. J.G. Ballard I blame chance, that reprobate, for my slide and spin and slow-motion carom across both lanes. I’ m lost in an icy lot full of damaged cars, mine among them, towed by a trucker who had a tremendous day. At least I’ m not in love with my car. What hurts is not that stubborn muscle the heart, but only my ribs and back and foot, a humble list of injuries. My witnesses got on their cell phones to call police who filled out forms in neat block letters. If crashes are sexual, who has the fun? I think drivers who lived through today are turning up music to induce sweet amnesia. I clutch ruined cars as I slip from one to the next, find my own with one door working and papers I need inside. Is this like after a funeral? People go home to love and trouble, quarts of gin, a woman kissing another woman, a woman so drunk she can ’t stand up. Some must call friends and tell their crash stories; some call strangers and whisper into their quiet machines. Barbara Daniels lives in Sicklerville and taught English at Camden County College from 1976 through 2008. Her book Rose Fever: Poems was published by WordTech Press. She received two Individual Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts and earned an MFA in poetry at Vermont College.

Liz Abrams-Morley is the author of Learning to Calculate the Half Life (Zinka Press, 2001,) and What Winter Reveals (Plan B Press, 2005). Her second fulllength collection, Necessary Turns, is due out from Word Press/WordTech Communications early in 2010. Liz ’ s poems and short stories have appeared in nationally distributed journals and anthologies and have been featured on National Public Radio. She has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Arts Council and the Ragdale Foundation. Co-founder of Around the Block Writing Collaborative, (www.writearoundtheblock.org) she is an adjunct gypsy, part of the MFA in Creative Writing faculty of Rosemont College, and serves as a poet-in-residence in area schools.