Four Tires In The Western Hemisphere Roll Home Poem by A.Z. McCoy

Three separate times I saw
a tire rapt in savage flame's call
Childlike, a voice reached
through smoke, wonder-struck
a shroud of silence and awe,
what wasn't meant for touch.
The nebulous dream of Buenos Aires
whispers: 'watch the devouring
Nature, watch the tango of smoke
And its ephemeral partner, dark-smiling dusk.'

The first came, a crowded Plaza
de Mayo, sea of banners and signs
Words like sweet honeysuckle
dripping from each chant
I couldn't fully understand
A stranger told me the children
of the street, those without voice
on concrete beds, deserved a warm
and proper home
And as I left the square, down the alley
I witnessed the circle of fire,
People huddled all around
leaping blaze, rising between them,
disappearing into sky

New Year's the second tire
burned and melted, fire swirled to
bridge time
Midnight struck, the zeal
and smiling madness
Like I'd never seen before:
Streets, shrouded in smoke,
Showed last year's war
was over.
With fireworks
a torrential blaze upon
Night's curtain
Left no prisoners
Giddy children took over,
let go their roman candles
in streaks of mirth
Deep into sky, then
the ash, a falling mosaic
with stars behind
Amid cheers: 'Feliz nuevo
Ano! '
Till next round of color exploded
The university students danced around
Their ring of fire,
In dance with the flame's flicker
This year
might be different,
I thought

My visa expired on ninety days
Ferried me to Uruguay, a daytrip
For a document's new stamp
Colonia's colonial cobblestones tramped
And with Bolano's Savage Detectives
I slept into sunburn
Amid seaside fauna and flora,
green and red, a ship's return
to Buenos Aires labyrinth
I saw the third tire
glow and dazzle
With no one else around
The heat churned
brotherly in January summer
Who had set this, I wondered,
And left it
for me?
Cars drove past.
But the flames didn't speak,
nor did they ever
falter.

And a fourth tire never burns
No one ever strikes
such a match,
Never bathes it in gasoline
It was left alone
until
it set a girl's eyes agleam
lost in wildfire traces
She and her friend adopt
the lone tire as their own, like a child
roll it down
San Telmo
cobblestone
The rollick and the bounce.
Was it the tire
Or machinations inside me,
Never to be let down
In the night with dawn calling?
Homeward bound
this dream:
Four tires on a phantom
car keep rolling, carries
children and fire,
the laughter trailing
of a girl in late summer.