The Least Worry*
Bottles
in the back seat
levitate
while the driver’s
relaxed feet
lift up
from pedals.
Palms float
off the wheel
failing
to control
momentum as he
can’t negotiate
his way out of the curve.
His trajectory is aligned
with a home’s front entry
and is aiming to land on
the living room sofa.
But the front yard
canopy tree
blocking
moonlight
abruptly denies
his forward motion.
His car is no gymnast
and has no twisting reflex
to stick the landing
undamaged.
Neighbors, urged by smoke
curling
from the undercarriage,
drag him
from the driver’s seat
as he pukes out a slurred request
to switch his empties to the trunk.
*First published in David’s chapbook, Abrupt Edges, December 2025 by Bass Clef Books
_________________
David A. Goodrum
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
I’m letting go of the wheel, it might be as well. /The ground is coming for me now / We’ve gone over the edge / If you’ve got something to say, say it now. (The Smile, Bending hectic.)
Our commanding logic: how easily it falls, stripped of everything that made it logical. We look at ourselves through a glass. We don’t fall, instead we see ourselves falling, taking all attachments, preciousness, values down with us. Brief, beautiful last moment of suspension, with that frozen instant before the impact the most liberating of all. Levitate. Palms float. The end of the road, the event horizon where time slows to a stop. Call it a crash, call it a reality check, call it a reset – we cannot help but welcome it. As the British say, “Give your head a wobble”. Poetry is that wobble, moving strictly on public transport.
Review by Paul Jones
A drunk wrecks a car into a tree. But it’s not that simple. The descriptions make this poem. The details. “His car is no gymnast.”