Here’s another poem from my Car Guy Girl manuscript. This poem was originally published in This Land Press’s now defunct arts quarterly under my [deadname].

My selection process for which original poems I share on this website and when isn’t exactly organized. It’s generally a matter of which one I feel like sharing when I get to the day I’ve decided is my share an original poem day. My public domain poetry project follows stricter guidelines that I’ve set up for myself.

When I flip through my older poems (10+ years old), I find myself reading and rereading them with my trans identity in mind (I came out almost 1 1/2 years ago). That’s not some kind of attempt at assigning certain poems transness that isn’t there, but there are some in which that aspect of myself is evident in retrospect.

I can see themes in this poem that hit me in that spot, but I think/hope that this poem does more than that.

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Reminder for the other car girls out there: a few calluses from working on your shitbox or project car doesn’t make you any less of a woman.

Drive safe. Read poems dangerously.

💜Miranda📚

Oil filters into fingertips and under my nails,stains my calluses, clothes, driveway.

Now it’s five thousand miles (millions of years) old,drained into a tub I’ll take to the disposal downtown

where it still doesn’t cease its pouring, dripping, leaking.It follows me like the scent of a drugstore cologne.

Even when I pour five new quarts over the oldcylinder heads, the used oil remains with me,

shrugging off shower and scrub–coarse brushthat rubs my skin raw but cannot erase the stain.