Blue Laws: Provo, Utah

It’s Sunday, 1972,
the old turquoise station wagon
guzzles tarmac along the interstate,
Mom and Dad, an accelerating desire
to drown their road dust—family vacation
and the hazards of too much time together.
Is it the multiple states we’ve crossed
in half as many days—starchy meals,
stale motels, and now
Olivia Newton-John’s brain-spiking soprano
straining the AM wires with Have You Ever Been Mellow?
Is it me and brother in the back,
our futile stabs at the inter-galactic high notes
that finally steers Dad into one of his royal funks,
screeched vocals and the cashier
at the Food Mart we’re parked in front of
who won’t sell him a fifth of Jack?
Reclaiming the driver’s seat—
nerves cooked, coordination fritzed—
he doesn’t sense my mother’s shifting head,
aquarium-colored eyes moving in to comfort him.
And it happens so fast,
there’s no time to brake
when he whips around to navigate reverse,
elbow spearing her pretty iris—
cannonball of cartilage in the lake of her eye.
The swollen bruise of moon he sees
mounting the rear window—
like the one that will cover her lid,
turn three shades of blue
before the night is over.