On a trip through North Carolina, I read a few truckers' signs posted on the rear of their trailors. They were written to women driving the vehicles that passed them on the highway: notes asking for nudity. I wrote this poem "Flash Me" to guess at their desperate/lurid reasoning as they attached such messages for the passing world to read.

FLASH ME

no one knows
the loneliness of the road
like a trucker, his brain
fried by hamburgers
and blinding lights,
the night-stalking highways
sending bump-bumps each time
the wheels turn.

his message to passing cars?
a challenge, perhaps,
a sexual fantasy born of long
night’s frenzy, the hope
for intimacy.

“flash me” written on yellow
paper, taped to the trailer,
the rear-ward message to women
he hopes share his
loneliness and risqué hope.

“flash me” a hope for casual
nudity, a peek of breasts
smashed against the passenger’s
window, a dream of intimacy
fulfilled at seventy
miles per hour, a moment where
being lonely meets reality.