What’s that cliche about the journey rather than the destination? Riley Mac’s collection, In This Car, sets it on fire and hits the gas.

As I read the poems in this collection I remembered all the times I’ve crammed myself into some friend-of-a-friend’s car to go to a house party that was never as good as its anticipation. I remembered skipping class to go on blunt rides. I remembered “booze cruising” aka passing around a plastic handle of some warm and poisonous liquor and driving around suburban cul de sacs until we got bored or someone needed to throw up.

What I mean is there is a specific kind of nostalgia tied up in Mac’s raw, addictive, sexy, queer as fuck, tender as fuck poems. She sets a mood, conjures a specific time and place. The collection brings you into the poet’s world but also reminds you of your own life, which is I think a magic that good poems and good poets possess.

On nostalgia: it’s complicated. Riley’s aware, and there’s a real sense of all sides of the emotion here. We can treat our past selves gently without pretending that we’ve never been shitty, irresponsible, confused. The nuance of image and emotion flooding In This Car is beautiful and commendable. It’s not easy to be honest, especially with oneself.

For gentility, look to poems such as “everyone on earth is a teenage girl”:

never age past 16

and the credits roll like raindrops

raindrops on the windshield

like our tears

and the box of mix cds and love letters will mold but we will keep

How did Riley know when I was 16 my crush made me a mix CD? (Yes, the first song on it was “Take On Me” by A-ha. Yes, I still have it in a Doc Martens shoebox, tucked away in the top of my closet, collecting dust if not mold.) 

Because Riley knows people, and can write beautifully about how embarrassing and hopeful and loving they can be, have been. Because we can’t get rid of who we’ve been as much as we might want to. Because we can’t return to who we’ve been as much as we might want to. 

Nostalgia again: the thing Riley won’t let her nostalgia do is blur the truth. These poems are blunt. No one is innocent. See “22,” for instance:

i have stab wounds on my left arm and right thigh feel

like it was manipulative but hindsight isn't

always 20/20 that night i was really gonna lose you it was all i could think to 

do and now i’m older and we didn’t work out i wonder

was it worth it to be ugly

It’s complicated. We are all maybe manipulative and desperate sometimes. Especially at 22. Another memory: this one about a bad should-have-been-break-up fight driving back from a beach day, both of us tired, sunburnt, resentful. If you say you’ve never lost your shit in a car, you’re lying and you can’t ride with us.

The title of this collection, and the writing between the covers, reminds us that the car itself is a place where things happen, not just a means to an end. It’s a place for falling in lust, falling in love, singing, crying, screaming, being in control, losing control… and all of that is poetry. 

Reading this collection feels like the excitement of scandal, of being in love and feeling invincible. Riley’s pulled up outside your house waiting to take you places. Get in this car. Buy this book. Let her take you for a fucking joyride.

In This Car by Riley Mac, Everybody Press (2024), $17 on Everybody Press.