With Esso you get extra.
The Sinclair dinosaur roams through fossil fuel.
You can trust your car
to the man who wears the great big Texaco star.
Hess trucks often park under the Christmas tree.
Sunoco has slot machine pumps
and a logo shot through with an arrow.
QuickChek uses spelling originated in New Jersey.
Chevron should be worn on a military sleeve
and Amoco’s torch burns red white and blue.
BP reminds me of a game search
for beach plums and battery packs.
Getty, ponder someone getting very rich.
In Pennsylvania, they have Sheetz,
as though a curse upon themselves.
Shell makes me want to drive to the beach
while Gulf takes me to a land of orange amusements.
Mobil, washes your clothes clean with gasoline.
Ellen Foos is a senior production editor for Princeton University Press and the publisher of Ragged Sky Press. She has received fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center. She coedited “Dark as a Hazel Eye: Coffee & Chocolate Poems” and “Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems.” Her new poems are gathered in “The Remaining Ingredients” and have appeared in Mead, The Curator, Edison Literary Review, and Contemporary American Voices.
