Poetry+-+May+4


 * At The Last Rites for Two Hotrodders**

//X. J. Kennedy//

Sheeted in steel, embedded face to face, They idle now in feelingless embrace, The only ones at last who had the nerve To meet head-on, not chicken out and swerve.

Inseparable, in one closed car they roll Down the stoned aisle and on out to a hole, Wheeled by the losers: six of fledgling beard, Black-jacketed and glum, who also steered Toward absolute success with total pride, But, inches from it, felt, and turned aside.

In At the last rites for two Hotrodders, X.J. Kennedy talks about the deaths of two Hotrodders. The narrator seems to be friends of two people that died from a crash in the hotrodding race. The narrator is giving the rites for his two friends, and also seems to had been there at the time of the crash. The intended audience are the people who attended the funeral. The tone of the play seems to be very dark and mournful.The general message of the poem is that the hotrodders were playing a game of chicken, and that they died at a young age because of there stupid actions.