Steve Benson's "Drive In" reads like a dream stitched together from movie-theater scraps. The setting seems to be a drive-in or cinema, but scenes slide into one another without warning: a hitch-hiker who feels like a film character, a burger order, an usher calling intermission, gunfighters smashing a pharmacist's windows. Logic keeps slipping, and the poem seems to be imitating how a screen story and real life blur when you're half-absorbed in both.
The speaker sounds playful, hungry, and a little guilty, admitting to indulging "every passion." There's also an undercurrent of desire and menace, in the hard-muscled neighbor and the "fascist" who holds someone's head under water. By the end, the audience member melts into the seat like "semi-sour cream," and the speaker announces, "I have taken over," then warns the listener not to ask their question. The mood is woozy, funny, and slightly unsettling, like surrendering to a spell you can't quite explain.