Penelope Moffet

Penelope Moffet is the author of the chapbooks Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018) and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many literary journals and several anthologies. She lives in Southern California.

Rideshare

Spider the hue of an albino child’s eyelashes.
Spider like pale marble splashed by moonlight.
Almost invisible against the top of the windshield
with his long segmented legs pulled up against
his tiny body. Cellar spider who’s wandered far
from his nook in the underground garage
where my car lives mostly undisturbed.
I must have left a window cracked.

Halted by stoplights, by stop signs,
by the risky swerves of other drivers,
I peer up as he descends then soars again,
hearing my thoughts: Not on me, spider, please.
Home again, I offer him a receipt to crawl onto
but quick as a kid’s blink he’s gone.
No hint of folded legs anywhere.

I mean to bring a glass and larger page
the next time I must drive but three days later
I forget. And there he is, huddled by the speedometer.
Stay there, I say. When I park at my first stop
he gallops toward me, over the plastic spider
glued to a black rock glued to the dashboard,
down toward the fuel gauge, down
toward my knees.

I rush an open face-mask forward.
In he goes, then out the door.
I hope he makes it to a nearby patch
of dirt and mulch. When
I roll the windows down
the air shimmers with his dreams.