I had a lovely time last weekend in Regina. My hubby and I attended a wedding for one of his cousins. I'm mentioning this because I don't want people to get the wrong idea about the poem I'm posting today, which is a little dark. It was actually spawned over the course of 2 weekends, because the week before I was with my mother, helping her pack to move out of Lloyd, a day I was not certain I'd ever see. Anyway, someone did mention something at the wedding that sparked part of this story. She used the term "EQ", which I haven't heard in a while. It gave me a flash of inspiration:

EQ: "emotional quotient (psychology): quotient between the "emotional age" and the chronological age that meaures emotional intelligence (how well a person understands emotions); the most famous test used to determine the EQ is the MSCEIT (Meyer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test); see emotional intelligence"
- from wikipedia.org

ROAD TRIP 2006

I've never been good at waxing immaturity.
It doesn't look good on me.
It's like driving down a highway
in a car that's dropping parts
in every town along the way.
Still
my EQ drops like the mercury
in our northern prairie winters
amid the muggy good cheer
of summer laughter.

I step outside
to commune with nervous insects
drunk on the hum of flourescent light
and clouds of my second-hand smoke.
In precious hoards they flutter up to reach
their concrete amazon.
It feels like hanging from a branch
in a cubist's rain forest.
One black scarub
inches along its pilgrimage
to the toes of my cheap shoes
no matter how much
I fake out my distance
and I wonder how many
I trample in my dance.
I wonder if this scarub believes
that he commands me
or if he only wishes
I would stand still.
Like a car shaking loose
on an endless highway
I wonder what it will take
for me to pull it all together again
to pick up after my genocide
of pleasant esoteric lies.

I opened a window
to freshen the upholstry
and now there's a familiar drone
from the grill of the rear dash
and the car keeps shuddering
across a choppy yellow line.