BOMBlog’s Word Choice features original works of poetry, fiction, and art. This edition of Word Choice, selected by Peter Moysaenko, features poetry by Joseph Millar and art by Nader Ebrahimi.

Millar’s muscular poems mount expeditions into the wake of shrinking destinations, ruminant yet not quite mournful, jaded but glinting.

Car Music

Why don’t you just say one of your prayers,
she sighs on the way to the airport,

passing through the Virginia hills,
something hidden and dazed in her look

like the singer’s corrosive voice
smoldering out of the radio.

When we stop to stretch
in a grove of dark pines

she looks like she’s trying
to remember something

standing beside the fender
and bending the wing-mirror over,

daylight the color of tapwater,
silver-gray like the sky.

I look okay in this type of light, she says
no one can see my crow’s feet.

I can’t decide if she’s flirting with me
or trying to pick a fight.

What if I tell her I’m not afraid
of her midnight rages and vanities?

What if I give her these skinny violets
and say get back in the car?

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