RED CAR IN THE FUTURE

She must be real, the way she
makes my timbers shiver—
I’m apostrophized.

When there are dreams to be tallied,
I use a technique called
paired association.

An apostrophe is a way of turning
two realities into a fantasy.
It’s simple.

In the future, when someone says
red car, it means that you have to
kiss them quickly.

I worry that everything I desire
will disappear before I’ve made
a mental image.

Kissing is a way of soft-linking desires
to precise moments in time, but
so is traffic.

Desire is a way of saying wait,
I don’t want to unremember
your underwear.

I also worry about relative time.
Who knows how fast my actual life
is flying by?

She wants to know how you feel
at the end of each night, so she
touches you.

In the future, nothing will matter
so much as a red car; we want so much
to depend upon wanting.

Rob MacDonald lives in Boston and is the editor of the online journal Sixth Finch. His poetry has appeared in Octopus, notnostrums, H_NGM_N and other journals. Last New Death, a chapbook, is available from Scantily Clad Press.