Black Moss Press in 1999 began a series of anthologies
celebrating the big concerns of our lives. The first two were about
sports (Loser''s First) and love (I Want To Be The Poet of Your
Kneecaps). This year, the press turns its attention to cars. For
Black Moss Press, the year 2000 is the year of the car - that
blessed creature that hums along the highway in the intimidating
shadow of trucks, that catches the slip stream and is gone like a
cool breeze. The works in this anthology celebrate sex in the back
seat., grow nostalgic for the comfortable cars of our fathers and
lust after the cherry red convertible coups of our secret desires.
These poems and stories put women behind the wheel and send them on
journeys alone across the wide flat prairies. They stink of grease
and petrol. They get under your nails like grit and the grime of
old engines. They remind us of the past with chrome and fins of the
fifties and hearken to the future in a brand new dream machine. In
these poems, you will witness how one man expresses his
disappointment over a flat tire by walking around his car whacking
it with a snow shovel. You will feel the thrill of speed and the
freedom and beauty of the landscape with wind at the windows that
ruffles your hair. You will remember lost loves. You will read road
maps and dream long journeys. You will arrive at your destination
remembering what it meant to be carried indoors asleep in the arm
of your mother at the end of the day. And in these poems and
stories, you will curse the lemons and cuss the non-starters and
celebrate the supercharged wonders of your youth. This love hate
relationship with Henry''s Creature - the car - seems a universal
metaphor for life in North America, as we see the future in our
windshield, the present all around us and the past in our rear view
mirrors and we know that the automobile reminds us where we''re
going, where we are and where we''ve already been. And we know that
there''s something purely Canadian about black ice, road salt,
winter and the battery frozen to death in Saskatoon. We know the
ubiquitous road-killed porcupine of New Brunswick is a national
symbol. We know the rust rot that eats away all late model cars.
These authors get under the hood where things happen we don''t
quite understand. They shake hands with grease monkeys, used car
salesmen, and breathe in the exhausted redolence of being alive on
the cusp of what was and is and will be a central part of our lives
since Henry Ford watched the first people''s car roll off the
assembly line almost a century ago.