Accord

Every car is the Car of the Year;
they try to sneak this by you, hoping
the enthusiasm of their punctuation
obscures the memory. I try to tell them
this is hopeless – I may not have been raised with
Jesus, or strong heterosexual role models,
but we knew our mutual exclusivity
cold, what you weren’t because
someone else was, and the year’s not
big enough for all these sedans.

I hear it stretching at the seams, January
and December taut with endorsements,
mileages, whatever new place
they’ve managed to stick air bags, and
it resents being cheapened like this.

It knew the line about some
losing, some winning, but everyone
being winners was complete
shit, too, and it knows its time will come
and go, changing its article, disposing
of its calendars – its twelve playmates’
airbrushed tits buried
online, next to their ancestors, its
elections and championships compiled
into stats for next year’s
broadcasts; it is fine with this.

What it frankly can’t abide, though, is the
disrespect, the dilution of best, every make
and model and their grandmas lining up, me-too,
for the undisputed heavyweight title,
raising their gloves in synchronized paradox.