[Elizabeth Soto, Associate Editor: We as a society don’t know how to function in the face of “pre-existing lameness,” the pain that exists before the crash, before the fall. Marzi paints the picture for us here, the lingering feeling of death that follows, that haunts long after the car has finished crashing. The vibrations of the crash that existed even before the cars made contact at all.]

an android app for logging every

time my car has hit another car 

or other cars have hit my car 

accidents documented in rows & columns 

in america, cars crash into each other every

day years ago, i once was fired from a job 

picking up dog shit in rich people’s yards 

& the very next day a car ran through a red

light & crashed right into my car 

& the airbags exploded & the wheels spun

wildly & i immediately thought that i’d just

been killed there was no way i could have

survived 

such direct impact 

my car kissed a brick building

& i climbed out of the

wreckage 

walking in circles on the road while EMTs approached me

asking if my leg was injured 

“no, that’s just cerebral palsy, pre-existing lameness”

years later, i still sometimes think i’ve been dead all along

just a ghost driving a different car 

& occasionally hitting other cars