American Red Goes Out of Fashion

I used to have a red car.
Dad gave me the parts.
Pops lent a little money
and somehow I made it start.
Then I painted it American red
like mom’s tulips.

The license plate read Me+Me
a play on my sister’s name
since she paid for half the paint.
“Plus,” she said, “you sound conceited
and girls don’t like that.”
She was right
so I drove around my sister
instead of girls with lips
like mom’s red American tulips.

MeMe, Mimi, and I drove
everywhere.
The park,
the mountains,
Mimi’s soccer games,
the 24-hour movie rental,
(at twelve o’clock at night)
but all three
of us, well,
we really liked the park.
Sometimes MeMe
even allowed Mimi to drive.

One day,
MeMe, Mimi, and I drive
out of town
and after her DMV test
we let Mimi drive to the park.
I have my college apps,
she her summer reading,
so we sit under the trees,
a radio placed in MeMe’s open door,
and sing along to American songs.

But the breeze smells odd today,
like fuel and sap and hate.
We walk to find
and somehow join
a crowd with signs,
as angry as dad
when I got my first ticket.
But it’s only a crowd-
only human flesh and blood-
dividing our trees
from giant mechanical beasts.

I understand in a heartbeat
what these trucks are trying to do.
“Go back to MeMe,”
I tell Mimi,
but she frowns
and shakes her head.

“This is our park
they’re tearing up,”
she growls.
“I’m not gonna stand
for that.”

I shake my head.
“Me, neither.”
I say, tossing the keys.
We need a little more metal
on our side.
“Now go get MeMe.”

My red car is a little sturdier
than their treehugging mountain bikes
and with our proud American songs
blasting from the radio
we don’t back down.
Mimi doesn’t finish her book,
and the wind blew away my apps,
but we have found something-
something to believe in-
and we’re all burning American red.

Mimi decides to eat her veggies
and MeMe gets her first dent
when the guys chopped
down my red treehouse
and tore up our yard
of streams and oaks
because the government
wanted some more pretty red
houses, just like ours.

Mimi got her biking friends
and I rallied my bio class
but it wasn’t enough
and now summer
smells like hot tar and exhaust
instead of wildflowers.
And American red isn’t so bright
anymore.

Red is a conspicuous color
and so when some forest-slaying
truck crushed my little car
I bought a new one.
It’s bigger. A jeep.
Hard to ID, grey,
not the color of the country
that lets guys tear
up rivers that I swim in
and trees where my younger brothers
climb.

So when I run into the trucks
that pulverize Sherwood Forest
and my friends slash
their tires
while Mimi plasters
SAVE THE EARTH bumper stickers
to each destructive vehicle,
I can drive everyone away
without a flash of red.

I can get home
without the sirens
and teach Mimi how to drive
my stickshift
so in case I get caught,
she will be free to drive
to that rally next weekend,
to yell at those politicos,
get them to shut up
and quit arguing.
Then they can stop
spilling oil in our oceans
draining water from our rivers
dumping trash into our deserts
breathing poison, melting air
and tearing up the park
where I will drive the first girl
who isn't my sister.

The stanzas and rhythm that you use here make this read more like a story and less like a poem. It is very difficult to find a cadence here, and throughout the poem I had a rough time keeping up. I think if you look up a rhyming pattern, or maybe try reading this out loud to yourself a couple of times, you might be able to clean it up quite a bit.

Also, at the beginning, I had the vague impression that we were stepping back a little further in time. It doesn’t read like a modern retelling and you may find it helpful to throw some more current references in at the beginning.

a radio placed in MeMe’s open door,

This tripped me up. Why not use the car’s radio?

But the breeze smells odd today,
like fuel and sap and hate.
We walk to find
and somehow join
a crowd with signs,
as angry as dad
when I got my first ticket.
But it’s only a crowd-
only human flesh and blood-
dividing our trees
from giant mechanical beasts.

I got a little tangled up, here. I can’t put my finger on why, but I think it’s because the emphasis here is on the protesters, rather than on the bulldozers. I couldn’t decide what our heroes were opposing, exactly.

So when I run into the trucks
that pulverize Sherwood Forest
and my friends slash
their tires
while Mimi plasters
Greenpeace bumper stickers
to each destructive vehicle,
I can drive everyone away
without a flash of red.

Because Greenpeace is classically associated with the protection of whales, this is a little confusing.

and tearing up the park
where I drove the first girl
who wasn’t my sister.

You were doing a good job building tension at the end, but this part is just a little tangled. Who is this girl? We haven’t mentioned her at all during the poem. Are you talking about the car?

This is clearly something that you are passionate about, and I applaud your enthusiasm. I love the way you are trying to tell a story, and I think with a little tweaking this will be a really nice piece.

Nice work!

This was amazing! It was so well thought out, I really don't have much to say to it. One thing I noticed, and it may be that I just read too fast and wasn't paying enough attention, is the end: where I drove the first girl who wasn't my sister. Are you talking about Mimi? I thought she was your sister. If she is then I'm even more confused. Who is the other girl?

That's all. I like your theme, you did very well with it: You got the message across without being all tree-huggery and lame-sounding. It's motivational, It makes people think, especially with the connection to the color of your car. Very well done.

I really enjoyed reading this! It was extremely well written! I was confused on whether Mimi was his sister, or the first girl he drove that wasn't his sister. You might want to clarify that in one of those spoiler tag things (I don't know what they're called ) I was also confused as to why they used a radio in the car door instead of just using the car radio. If the car didn't have a radio, and that's why they used their own, you might want to clarify that as well. Other than that, this was amazing! Keep writing! BRAVO!

I want to thank you all for your comments, they are extremely helpful and I seriously consider all of them. I feel like poetry is something that is often revisited and rarely truly finished, but you are all helping me get there.
@Jelen, your detailed feedback was great. I definitely got the impression of what you think would be better here/there, and it was really helpful. Especially your thing on Greenpeace, which I didn't really consider, given that this poem is centered around trees.
@Sassykat, thank you very much. I edited the ending involving Mimi/girl who isn't my sister, as the idea was that the park would still be around for when the speaker had a girlfriend/time passed. Your feedback was great, and I really appreciate it.
@michaeld, lovely review, and I tried to fix the ending involving Mimi/other girl. Thank you for your comments, thank you, thank you, thank you.