Excerpt
Hot Rod

It's snowing dogwood blossoms this April Fools Day. Beneath the tree a 1949 Mercury coupe idles, hugging the curb. Angora dice dangle like square testicles from the rearview mirror. I'm walking by and thinking about fear, how it comes upon me as hunger, full of form and empty of substance, like now when the growl of unmuffled pipes on this classic car reminds me that I'm growing old. This is my fear today—that I've become an antique, past my prime and losing time. I need chrome added to my running boards, fender skirts to cover rust, and my hood buffed frequently or the color fades. My wide whitewalls are scuffed and require scrubbing with a stiff wire brush. Tune ups take more effort and newer tools. One plug is always fouled. This fear of aging is a small terror, I'm thinking as I turn the corner, when compared to my brother's, who has just learned he has lymphoma, or the horror hiding in the rest of the world as they balance their lives between cluster bombs and dysentery, malnutrition and malaria, river blindness and land mines. Still, it always catches me by surprise—the vague, but vicious, fact that even time, a concept without end, has its limits.