Editor's note: Dave's poems are based on The Fast and the Furious film franchise; if you're in Chicago as of this posting, he has a reading event Friday April 14th at 8pm Volumes Bookcafe. Here's a Facebook link for this, The Fast and The Furious Poetry Night
These poems are from the chapbook "The Fast and The Orpheus" - available at Volumes Bookcafe on April 14th for free (while supplies last)
KEY
Brian O'Connor = Paul Walker
Dominic Toretto = Vin Diesel
Mia Toretto = Jordana Brewster
I JUST WATCHED ALL THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS MOVIES IN A ROW (BY THEATRICAL RELEASE) AND IT WAS AWESOME
after Derek Keisgen
The raced a freight train’s cow catcher and won
They landed a car on a boat
They drifted up a ten story parking garage
They hitched trucks to a moving fuel tanker and stole the gasoline with liquid nitrogen and a hammer
Letty died
They stole a convertible off a train and drove it off a cliff
They anchored a Soviet cargo plane to the ground with a series of military grade vehicles
Letty rised
They stole a supercar in an Abu Dhabi skyscraper and flew it through the air into an adjacent skyscraper
uncontented, they flew the car into a third skyscraper
I’m sitting in my car on a honking road paved of xylophones letting a family of geese pass me
I can’t drift
I’m not made of money to buy new sets of tires
my car’s name is Dwayne
he has sand on his floorboards from ten years ago
There is no furiousness here
There is no way any of this will ever end
The torment of standing still
inside the empty cabin of illusions
SECOND VIEWING
for daughters without fathers
I didn’t cry the first time
years ago
when after Mia was newly pregnant with their child
Brian asked Dom what he remembered about his and Mia’s father
Dom smiles and says he had barbeques
for anyone in the neighborhood every Sunday
you could eat as long as you went to church
and he helped Mia with her homework
every night, staying up after bedtime
to study the next day’s lessons
of course they are pulling on non-domestic beers
standing on balconies where men talk truthfully
when Brian says that’s just the thing
I never knew my dad
he was never around
And Dom says
you ain’t gonna be like that Brian
When it first was released,
The Onion published an interview
with the “Five-Year Old Screenwriter of Fast Five”
and now I wonder
why there’d be anything wrong with that
now I wonder
if it’s true
//
Dave Landsberger is a poet and writer living in Chicago, IL. He is a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a collective of poets who write impromptu typewritten poetry by request. He is also a founding member of American Nature Comics, a group of Chicago and Manzanillo, Mexico based comics professionals. Dave is the author of Suicide by Jaguar/Suicidio por Jaguar (Jai-Alai Books), a full length collection of poems printed in both English and Spanish with translations by JV Portela. Dave is also the author of the comic BEEF JAMS, which can be read on VICE and in the pages of Image Comics. A 2x winner of the Academy of American Poets Award, Dave has been profiled by The New Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald for his various works.