Learning to Drive (Golden Shovel)

My mother is rightly scared thinking I
will freeze floor shipwreck or resign – not learned
from her scorched but love-filled scoldings like to
drive, what do you do first – clutch, brake, breathe. Do
all drivers know how to breathe or do it
like this – highly, het up, fretful after
I park parallel – she holds my hand: my
fear of everything is home. My father
would be proud if he saw this, if he moved
parallel. If his place wasn’t far – away.









Prince Bush is a bookish, queer and black poet at Fisk University, majoring in English with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. He is a Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets Fellow (2019), scholar-in-residence at Oxford University (2019), and an Erastus Milo Cravath Presidential Scholar. https://pbush.com