Love Machine

Dashboard Hula girls dance

mile after mile as the gas tank hits

empty and we stop,

fill up on fuel, Mars bars,

beer. Someone, at some time,

has posted poetry

on the van's blue and white walls:

Tomorrow we'll see

the night in a

Costa Rica light.

He calls it the love machine,

I call it our ticket to San Jose.

Mexican serape blankets are piled in mountains

on our knees, ankles, feet. The heating

broke in Tamarindo and he doesn't want to stop

to get it fixed. No one said it got cold

in Costa Rica.

The radio is broken too,

plays Getaway Van over and over

and over but if we turn it off, all we hear

is the hum of asphalt, the bellow

of the missing muffler.

Silence.

There is no swish and sway

of hula girls' grass skirts

when the radio's off.