Honking at the cemetery
He drove his drunk buddies into
the cemetery one night, parked his car
in the middle of the gravestones,
their giggles stopping when he honked
the horn in the middle of the dead,
pressed his elbow into the metal ring
on the steering wheel and signaled
to his father to rise from the ground
and whip him again, his friends begging
him to start the engine and get them
out of there when they heard something
call back, not a shout or a scream,
but a note from an ancient instrument.
He claimed, later, he honked all the way,
drove slowly down the path between
the markers, the sound they heard
in the trees not the dying echo from
his horn. He paused at the gates,
looked both ways before entering
the highway to deliver the boys,
dodging the oncoming lights at
the last second the way the old man
taught him during moments between
fathers and sons when every blinding
beam in their eyes counts.
—Ray Gonzalez (Bio)