by Kent Koprowicz
Denver to San Francisco in a 1978 gray Toyota SR5,
handed down from my sister,
Michael Jackson probably at his peak,
me ready for a divorce.
A credit card. Maybe fifty dollars.
No plans but west.
Vail Pass. Glenwood Canyon, still under construction.
Grand Junction. The Book Cliffs —
magical, out of Middle Earth —
the Salt Flats. Reno. Truckee.
A wrong turn back into Nevada.
A million lanes winding into Oakland,
San Francisco that way.
I bought a denim jacket at the Gap.
Drove down Lombard Street.
Crossed the Golden Gate
and couldn’t afford the motel.
Slept in Muir Woods.
Bathed in the men’s room sink.
All of it with a bum alternator.
Always parked on a hill
just in case.
Kent Koprowicz is a poet and biostatistician in Seattle, where he works on data monitoring committees for late-stage clinical trials. His poems tend to start from something precise — a statistic, a road, a failing alternator — and follow it somewhere else. He reads at Hugo House. “Alternator” is his first published poem.
