"Cadillac Moon" by Kevin Young

Today's poem is from Kevin Young, a contemporary African American poet from Lincoln, Nebraska.Young teaches creative writing and English at Emory University in Atlanta.

Key terms for students: enjambment, diction, alliteration, assonance, simile, metaphor

Cadillac Moon

Crashing
again—Basquiat
sends fenders

& letters headlong
into each other
the future. Fusion.

AAAAAAAAAAA.

Big Bang. The Big
Apple, Atom's
behind him—

no sirens
in sight. His career
of careening

since—at six—
playing stickball
a car stole

his spleen. Blind
sided. Move
along folks—nothing

to see here. Driven,
does two Caddys
colliding, biting

the dust he's begun
to snort. Hit
& run. Red

Cross—the pill-pale
ambulance, inside
out, he hitched

to the hospital.
Joy ride. Hot
wired. O the rush

before the wreck—

each Cadillac,
a Titanic,
an iceberg that's met

its match—cabin
flooded
like an engine,

drawing even
dark Shine
from below deck.

FLATS FIX. Chop

shop. Body work
while-u-wait. In situthe spleen

or lien, anterior view—removed. Given
Gray's Anatomy

by his mother for recovery—

151. Reflexion of spleenturned forwards
& to the right, like

pages of a book—
Basquiat pulled
into orbit

with tide, the moon
gold as a tooth,
a hubcap gleaming,

gleaned—Shine
swimming for land,
somewhere solid

to spin his own obit. 

This poem is simply unnerving. The false comfort of the "organization" - three lines per stanza, short lines... it's contradicted as soon as the poem starts. The harshness of the diction: "Caddys / colliding, biting / the dust he's begun / to snort." It's just hard to say these things. It gives the poem a sharp, serrated sort of feel - the alliteration serves this purpose as well: "Big Band. The Big / Apple, Atom's /..." The alliteration isn't sweet or effortless, it's confusing and alarming. The poem is a snapshot of a collision that is compared with the crash of the Titanic, and the author has chosen a structure and a language that express collision in a different (but no less jarring) way. There's an element of recuperation near the end of the poem, but I'm confused by the resolution. As I look away from this poem after reading it, I am still wincing- I feel as though I've been through something, though I'm not completely sure what.

http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/179954