My Pet Bulldozer

by Megan Denton

Ask me about my pet bulldozer. Ask me about her horsepower,

her hydraulics, her specs,

and speed. Ask me how it feels to

  slide into her saddle

and tear through the fields of all that used to scare me. Give me

 demolition. Give me a salamander and a stone

and you may approach her slowly, hear her

diesel purr. Then you’ll know: not power

like a C.E.O. has power but power like the smell of spring,

sweet and green. My pet bulldozer is fifteen feet tall.

No spindly, stubborn weed can stop her. Not the Bloodgood, not

the pumpkin patch. Not the man off Holly Ridge, not the one

in Highland Park. No mustached hell-bent charmer

or swaggering fool can touch me now. No firetruck, no titan,

no trailblazer. I can buck and gallop for miles.

Megan Denton is the author of Mustard, Milk, and Gin, winner of the 2019 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize (Hub City Press 2020). She received her MFA from Purdue University. Her work has appeared recently or will soon in POETRY, The Adroit Journal, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. She currently lives and teaches in North Carolina.