Rebuilt Title

Before we bought "pre-owned" parts
or salvaged, or recycled,
we went to junkyards.
With their boiled out radiators,
glistening like tar,
lined up in neat little rows
like a military graveyard.
The dried bones and relics
of Chevys, Fords, and Olds
all laid out on shelves,
in an auto parts catacomb.
Its caretakers attired
in industrial laundry uniforms
anointed with grease by noon,
with their oily pompadours,
sideburns and ink pen tattoos
and talons highly skilled
in the scavengers' art
would turn and wheel
crushing the butts of Chesterfields
beneath their heels
while plucking out the beating heart
from the metal carrion
of Buicks and Dodge Darts.

Now I rummage through
foxed and forgotten quarterlies,
and musty, dog-eared anthologies
scouring for a "like-new" metaphor,
straight and neat as the day
she left the showroom floor -
(a little bondo, a little primer
and she'll be good to go,)
or an AM/FM tape deck that plays
"The Fiddler of Dooney" and
"Requiem" on the radio.
Maybe a clever enjambment
that's not too badly bent
Or an old familiar simile
that still might have some tread.
I look up at the soldered sky,
and not without some dread,
and pray Thanksgiving break
will be warm and clear this year.
For soon it will be far too cold
to weld this rusty rhyme scheme
on this old doghouse villanelle.
Or maybe I can arrange the use
of my neighbor's heated garage -
which shouldn't be too dear -
no more than a case of beer.
And with luck, I'll have this baby
on the road by Christmas,
or, at the latest, by New Year's.

^

Biography

Barney F. McClelland is currently slipping into senescence with a curmudgeonly old cat named Tiger in their tastefully appointed Clifton apartment. He occasionally takes time out from expounding on Hobbesian eschatology and the intricacies of Irish hornpipes, to publish poems, stories and articles both here and in Ireland and the U.K. His work has appeared in Cairn, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Aura Literary Arts Review and The New Formalist. In 2001 he was awarded the KotaPress Anthology Award for Poetry.

In his spare time, Mr. McClelland enjoys reading the works of dead white European males, smoking cigarettes, and plotting revenge.