Road Rage

Jean Baudrillard | Robert Bechtle | Matt Bollinger | Peter Cain | César | John Chamberlain | Liz Cohen | Gregory Crewdson | Judy Dater | Justin Favela | Sylvie Fleury | Mary Heilmann | Justine Kurland | Peter Larkin | Kristen Morgin | Malcolm Morley | Richard Prince | Ed Ruscha | David Salle | Cindy Sherman | Peter Stampfli | Henry Taylor | Kenji Yanobe

Exhibition Events & Extras

First Car

A poem written by Tom Healy for Road Rage

No ribbons or pictures or grins.
The mother’s man chose.
Stepfather, boyfriend, dad who wasn’t
a full-on deadbeat.
More strings than gift.
Give the finger to his lecture.
Grab the key.

It’s the nothing you’re owed,
the little we can afford,
how much he wanted
to live through you or
make clear you’re not his fault,
not his friend, maybe
(don’t make me sick to say it) a fag.

Same ritual as your first time getting drunk,
first swing at your old man,
first time you’re spit at
because you don’t have it in you,
you’re a punk and a sissy and
a momma’s boy.
You think your mother will fix your goddam car?

But every boy as we believed boys to be
still wants muscle, still wants wheels,
wants the same jacked-up two-door ride.
A pony car, the old guys
called it—long hood,
short deck, open mouth.
Same hunger for another tongue.

A barely sideswiped Camaro
is what my brother got.
Getting it ready was his world.
Welding spark, Bondo, sandpaper, sweat,
swapped-out leather bucket seats,
new chrome wheels and the world was beautiful,
Perfect Blue Metallic. ​

For perfect blue, the theory says
all green and red must go.
Then a trick of aluminum chips
suspended in the color
to make it metal
and all of it ambered in polyurethane
for polish and glow.

But the world drives around
with imperfect paint.
My first car was sneer, ripped seats,
rusted maroon.
A Chevy Nova four-door sedan
that looked like mom jeans,
thick glasses, Sunday school.

We always said maroon.
Maroon is red mixed with brown.
But the Internet says burgundy was the color
of the ’73 Chevy Nova.
Burgundy is purple stirred with red.
Maroon is mud.
Burgundy is wine.

Tom Healy is an American writer and poet, curator and public servant. He has chaired the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, worked under presidents Clinton and Obama for the arts, was awarded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg the New York City Mayors Award for Arts and Culture, and taught Creative Writing at NYU. He is currently curator of public programs at The Bass Museum in Miami Beach. Since 2009, he has been a guest writer each year at the New York State Summer Writers Institute.