Demolition Derby

                  Sonya's so good that all the guys 
pick on her, so the evening's narrative goes. I've heard she wears 
yellow t-shirts each time to match her hair. Last time her tennis 
shoes got so dusty that she had to throw them out because there 
was no way on earth that they could be white again. 
                  Trunks shrink like deflated accor-
dions, like melodramatic arguments after they've met face to 
face with someone's indifference. A baby cries and pouts 
while her mother is trying to scoop more Velveta on to her 
nacho. The father is strung out on something, someone in 
back of us says. A teenager with severe acne turns around 
and fires a dart full of cavities into my gaze. We give in to the 
pleasure of destruction for the sheer sake of waste. What 
inside, the collision, the jerk on the nape that makes the 
driver wonder whether this one's it. Swallow me dust while 
the crowd cheers and claps its French fries away into the 
space between a nearby neon and the floodlights gathering 
an army of many sized moths.

Reprinted from American Poet, Fall 2002. Copyright © 2002 by Mónica de la Torre. Reprinted by permission of the author. All rights reserved.