Three Poems – Stephen Meads

Like A Rock

You own a truck the same color as your muscles
deep tan and built only to drive over rocks
to eat them with tire teeth that spit out the land.

Every time you put on a hat you flex.
Twist the brim, flex. Flip back your hair, flex.
Your muscles glint in the sun like a truck,
like a rock. Own nothing but denim.

All of your clothes are jeans, rough
blue, navy blue, dark blue. Like your blood
which pumps through your veins like gasoline,
flex. Each one of your muscles pops
like a piston in an engine.

Like a truck driving wild and free
over the mesas and valleys chewing up the dirt
spitting it hot and dusty into the wind
behind you. Choke the eagles. Insignia
on your jean jackets. All your hats, denim.
Flex.

Your truck is like your body
hard and steel and glinting in the sun
oil up, your biceps are your penises
twist and flex. Show off the vein
look at all the damage you could do

when you split the sky in the roar
of V8 engine thunder, kiss the asphalt
goodbye, you don't need it. Embrace
the open road in the crook of your bicep
like giving a friend a headlock
with a prehensile penis. Flex.

Wear your hat like you never drive anything
but your truck. Flex. Let the dirt
fuck itself in the knees of your jeans.

Hot and sweaty. Flex. American dirt.
Flex. Tan bondo. Like a rock. Flex.
Keep driving. Flex. Kill eagles. Flex.

You own a truck. You have sex
like a monster. Lie there in bed
flex. Hold her with your biceps.

Lay there. Like a rock.