Cartoon
© Beth Roberts
All the brittle sun slamming through the auto
mobile's invented and inflicted holes and rolled
down windows makes the eyes bug out like
a goofy joe, personoid staggering in a quick

passage--many ways to get lost in the cracks
between this reel and that real, loud gaping laughter past
Good Humor Ice Cream's truck stopped dead on
I-80, in Iowa, on the third day past the Fourth.

What's more, there're many more caricatures shooting
by next door, some kind, others monstrous, all lost
in a twinkling of a river in a windowpane (air
conditioning). We comment on the make and model

while our hands grow huge. One grabs at bill
boards to halt the rocket's thought, minutely per
uses the new and next-to-new blueprints of probable
regrets, well, too easy to take off when you're still

at 80 mph, we might as well embrace the UFO,
the faster we'd go the more our lips would curl,
tears harden to horns with which to toss our kids
to a place where the arms could easily soar.