Tom Laichas
What the Dodge Dart Did
was find the liquor store on Fletcher Drive
in Mixville. Tom Mix, 1940s Western
star, he had a ranch, he was a real cowboy,
but by this time Mix was dead beyond
recall and soon enough his Mixville
name would vanish from the signage.
What the Dodge Dart did was drive to Mixville
from the hillside house that overlooked
the liquor store, the Thrift-T-Mart, the mobile
home park just across from Conrad’s diner.
We’d stay inside the car, me and mom
and sister, while Dad went in to buy six quarts
of Coors, club soda, scotch, ginger ale
—this is what all dads do, we thought, drink
all night, read the L.A. Times and Playboy
on Fridays, their drinks in squat tumblers:
thick glass, thickened tongues, thick sleep
in La-Z-Boys and BarcaLoungers. A few
owned Darts. Some owned Falcons
or Coronets. One neighbor owned a Datsun.
Ricky’s dad, a plumber, had a GM pickup.
All those cars found liquor stores for all
those men and bore that liquor home
in trunks on top of full-size spares. Tires
smelled of steel belted rubber. Every
car dripped oil on its driveway. No one
cared. The alcohol, it lasted years past
wars and wives and kids. These men
stayed thin. Something in the Jim Beam,
in the Coors, that cleaned them out by
breakfast. None died from that or from
the L&Ms and Kools and Marlboros—
nothing killed them ever. Then one day
they quit their smoking, cut their drinking.
They never told us why. Then they died.
Now we’re as old as they were then. Like
our dads, we drink, we smoke, we sleep.
Like them, we never die.
Then, like them, we do.
Tom Laichas is the author most recently of the poetry collection Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (FutureCycle Press, 2023). His poems have appeared in Altadena Poetry Review, Does It Have Pockets, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Eclectica, Plume, and other journals. He lives in Venice, California.
Second Coming is a publication of Indolent Books, a haven for poets over 50 without a first book and a welcoming space for women, people of color, queer and trans writers, and others who do not fit molds or conform to expectations.
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Wow! What a wonderful comment on mens' lives then and now. Loved how it pulled me through and boxed me into that life.
Amazing poem this morning. This one really strikes me. 👍