Lou Reed Like a Black Bed Sheet
Because Jet Blue
stopped flights to Pittsburgh
unless you wanted to detour
through Chicago
which, if you think about it,
from New York,
means you really overshot your goal,
we rented a car
and I had driven
maneuvering us out of the city
because my husband hates to drive
and especially hates to drive in Brooklyn
so that now as the long stretches of
highway rolls forever before us
like an endless black bed sheet,
he drives
and that means it’s my turn
to be in charge of the radio.
What do you want to hear, I ask
and he shrugs, like he always does.
Doesn’t matter.
No indierock, he says.
No chick singers.
I scroll through my songs,
knowing that takes a decent size chunk out.
I offer Bruce and Petty
Ryan and the Beatles
and he shrugs, even to the Beatles
because it’s late and we’re tired.
Whatever, he says.
Because neither of us wanted to take this drive.
It wasn’t like the one five years ago across the country where everyday
would bring us something new.
We knew exactly where we would end up.
Exactly what it would mean.
I’ll find something, I said.
And as I hit play
Lou sings
It’s so cold in Alaska
It’s so cold in Alaska
It’s so cold in Alaska
I open the window
just as we reach the tunnel
and think about how long it’s been
since I quit smoking
longer still since I started
before I left that little town
that had little to do
and how someone
usually Wyatt
would put on Lou Reed
as I laid on the hood of a car
stoned
at the lake
and Maureen danced and laughed
back when I was just a teenager
and life stretched before me like a black bed sheet
and in this car,
as we pass through the tunnel
my husband places a hand on my thigh
warm
and says over Lou’s hard voice
this is exactly what I wanted to hear.
Exactly.
Ally Malinenko 