The Prince Of Perch Fishing - University of Pittsburgh Press

And on the van that comes to cart the pissants around, the geezers
and drips and shit-buxs with walkers.
She undoes the emergency brake, slips the shit knob down.
We don’t want you killing yourself, Mom.
Don’t you Mom me, she says.
She turns, tries to crane her neck to look but her neck is too stiff
and they’re rolling now anyway, slipping down the drive backward,
and maybe too quickly. She hits the brake hard. Instead of stopping
short like a decent car should the thing jolts ahead, or does it, who
can say, who can think in the cracking once the chaos begns? The
garage door is kindling and the kitchen wall too, and now the wall
to the den, but who’d notice, it happens so fast, who’d see the roof
caving in, collapsing on plant stands and puzzles and shaxered antiques,
croquet mallets and kites, on eight generations of china in
pieces, her water dispenser upended, the coffee can for the organ
sixing quaintly upright. Besides, she’s got an appointment, and
motherfuck it she’ll get there, by crook or by hook. Even if she has
to circle back by Rock Lake, or Sparta, wherever. Even if there’s a
truck dead ahead on the road, and there is, wherever she is, bearing
down in the dusk, hugely floodlit, a truck loaded with logs or with
ice, aiming straight at her, bearing down on the car, which is hers.
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