Salvage Expedition, by Elizabeth Buttimer

Posted on September 11, 2019

Salvage Expedition

By Elizabeth Buttimer

Walking through pull-a-part

I see rusted monuments

to winding roads

and miles of interstate highways.

Powerful lines of muscle cars

petroleum sanctuaries,

speed possessed sports cars

spacious sedans and memories

of family vacations and rainbow sherbet.

Innocuous vans, beige and invisible

who once sported booster seats,

and Cheetos on the floor,

headless gummy bears

decapitated by razor sharp

milk teeth and french fries

hard and curled with age.

The weeds wrap around metal

and scavengers have left denuded

cars and SUVs, like the skeletons

of dinosaurs at the museum.

Broken glass and crushed crumple zones

tell the forensics of how this field,

a junkyard, became their resting place.

Kudzu created their constraint,

muting the siren call of the road

and the lure of asphalt.

That was then, and this is now,

for the bones of the road.

Feast for the cannibals’ claw,

their highest utility.

and the open road only for

those few, those chosen parts

who someday may return to tell

the tale of a second chance.

The Halcyone Literary Review

Volume 2 * Fall/Winter 2018

Elizabeth Buttimer is inspired by the exotic in the everyday moments of our lives, the sense of camaraderie that lives in small towns, family tales, Southern history and cultural heritage. Buttimer has been published in Blue Mountain Review, Magnolia Quarterly, and Reach of Song anthology. This year she won the Natasha Tretheway Award from the Atlanta Writers’ Club and previously placed second in the national poetry contest Let’s Write.