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"Pontiac"
by Seb N

I saw a Brewster Green '73 Firebird
with a bumper sticker that read
"I never thought I'd miss Nixon."
I laughed so hard
scalding coffee
shot out my nose
and I thought about
my old man.

My old man
was a rock-ribbed
Republican.
My mom, too,
in a firm and quiet way.
"I don't care who you are
you're never too poor
to pick up your own front yard,"
they'd always say.

I didn't notice
the scam of
2000.
I was getting divorced;
he was comic relief.
"Another one-termer
just like his poppa"—
even my old man
called him a thief.

My old man
and I talked the
evening after the
towers came down.
He was watching CNN.
"Look at his face," he
told me. "That man
is a coward; you can see the panic
in his eyes."

Ir'ny is—
an AWOL flyer
touching down
with his helmet in his hand
adjusting his codpiece
under a banner saying,
"mission accomplished," my old man
choked on lost words—he went red and
spat and cursed.

My old man
saw the fear in his
eyes and
I saw it too
when he gave that big speech
about the architects of freedom
whose names he did not know—
a lost, little boy on a stage
that dwarfed him.

I saw a Brewster Green '73 Firebird
with a bumper sticker that read,
"I never thought I'd miss Nixon."
And I never felt closer
to my old man.

Seb N hails from San Jose, California, and he quite likes it there. Despite the handicap of a public education in Baltimore, he holds down a job and speaks reasonable English. He is a big, happy drunk and a rather hit and miss poet. Seb drives a Pepper Green 1970 GTO.