Passenger In The Boot Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Potholes in stormy swipes
have shaken us like maracas
throughout the drawn-out stretch
with bumps and sudden tilts.

Too many animals crossing
the road to smooth
out a ride of starred spectacles,

as another running tree
of a traffic policeman stumbles
and falls flat on the chest
on a craggy, sloping sidewalk,

as he chases a deer that dribbled
past a small car and motor cycle,
danced between two lanes,
and melted into the woods?

(ii)

We're melting too into ourselves
in the cold gale tying us
into small floating knots and twigs,
our arms and legs hard pliers.

We're growing into heavily-feathered
wings of birds riding in a limbless car.
In the growing drought,
we've been inflated plastic balls

in our baggy gowns, sleeves flying
off, as our outfit swallow
more wind and bumps our heads
on our slithering car's roof.

(iii)

Unless a fallen tree lying across
the road cuts off our trip,
we should be arriving on time.

But wait a minute, did you hear
that growl after the howl?
Did I hear an animal shift in the boot?
A lion, or maybe a smaller beast?

Let us pull over to the curb.
The car is also tapping drums
louder than the animals' kicks and groans.

Let that cat not devour us
like overgrown mice
squeaking at each other.

(iv)

Turn off an engine driving
our chilled fright into pieces
in a roaring beast's mouth.

Aha, as we climb to the curb,
our car tilts, and our tire folds up.
It bounces and flattens out
into a piece of cold darkening tinder

swallowing heat after a spell
of rolled-off heat
from vanished flames engulfing us.

How we glow, growing tall
and slender in a hearth
behind a car crumbled
into a frog not croaking loud enough.