I always drive about ten miles per hour over the limit, always sing, but today in the Toyota, belting out “Search and Destroy,” I’m not imagining myself under the violating glare of stage lights, as blonde and lithe as impossible Pop;
the first time I saw The Silence of the Lambs-- that curly blonde was alone in her car tapping the steering wheel, her own bass drum, and she really believed in that deliverance after all it was a great big world
before being punched out in the back of an abductor’s van.
And we were fourteen. And my boyfriend said, “She deserves to die for singing so bad.” Yeah, she was at the top of her lungs, but Tom Petty had promised we all had a way out.
Brittany Ober teaches at the American Language Program at Columbia University. Her chapbook Easy Beat was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2010. Her poetry has been published in Canteen, Gutter Eloquence, wicked alice, Ample Remains, The Aurora Journal, Breadcrumbs, and Words & Whispers. She lives in (and loves) Queens, New York.