Driving, Not Speaking

the way doubt
sits in your eyes
like a flat left
front tire
waiting for me
to rummage around
in the trunk
for a spare whisper
of encouragement
a tire iron
of hope

Karen Vande Bossche is a Bellingham, Washington poet and short story writer who teaches middle school students who ask questions such as “What color is your real hair?” Some of her more recent work can be found in Damfino, Damselfly and Silver Birch Press and is forthcoming in Sediment, Straight Forward Poetry, and Burningwood. Karen was born in the Midwest, raised in Southern California, and is firmly planted now in the Pacific Northwest. She believes that writing is one of the few venues to continued sanity in today’s world and that she has finally (finally) begun her real work.