Cameron Brooks

Pickup Smells

The strongest scent’s a final sip of Coke

mixed in its can with spat tobacco juice,

Dad’s musky leather Carhartts on the dash,

the cab’s upholstery, ripe with coffee stains,

dog fur, and dust sputtered through broken vents.

In early spring, or on some winter day

that smacks of early spring, the floor mats shed

their ice and waft about the cab bootprints

tracked in since October or so: of pine,

alfalfa, milkweed, smoke, and cow manure,

of rust and gas and blood from last year’s stag,

the one we hauled across a jagged field

in fall’s last incandescent blush, his neck

so adamant, so warm against my touch

as I knelt down beside the truck to pose

for a picture, the sweet metallic bite

of blood, of death, of life leaving the earth.

Cameron Brooks is a writer based in South Dakota and a recent graduate of the MFA program at Seattle Pacific University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry East, Cumberland River Review, Third Wednesday, North Dakota Quarterly, Ad Fontes Journal, North American Anglican, Opt West, and elsewhere.