Vanishing Hitchhiker



She’s a blur on a speedometer,
a sad swan of lace and make-up
masking bone with the grace of grave.

Her distress in prom dress drills your nerves
like a street lamp circuit
whining its handicap to the night.

Don’t stop, her request goes nowhere.
She wants you to stop. She waits
for your breaking moment of "Alas poor child!"

to skewer you with the dire truth of her mortality.
Don’t stop—
her little trick with door and portrait is cue

to bring you closer to the legacy of her accidental misery.
And isn’t that the point—
pin us to the berm and baptize us

in the morose of our own fated condition?
Don’t stop, it’s a given—
this roadside vision raises her thumb to us all.
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Submitted on May 01, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

38 sec read
2

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXX XXX XXX AXX AXX BBX
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 674
Words 128
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3

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