the leaves are changing and so
is our relationship the bare arms
exposed green and red forging
forward to the next when you want
the open road it was always what I
wanted though I’d never admit that
hurtling toward work the everyday
mundane our infrastructure finally
I do not know what is beyond
the next bend construction cones
over grass long forgotten words
another dead deer on the left side
of the highway where I have
traveled often just to get here
(originally published in Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Fall 2024)
driving
Forty Years From Now, This Poem Will Make Sense (Disregard if Forty Years Have Passed)
I am sentient
enough– half-
asleep at the
wheel
I already
miss you
if I miss
my turn,
misguide
my controlling
hands into
another lane.
I have a tote
of sorrows
lugged
into a luggage,
third floor closet,
plastic blue bag
crinkling
in the night.
I wish–
I want–
you never
to read them.
This is a message
to me
from half
my current age–
though revelation
is what
I want
to avoid,
it is now
(was?)
true.
(originally published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fall 2023)
Falling Rock
As soon as a stone (from where,
who knows?) cracked my wind-
shield during a delivery I quit
my job as a driver. I zagged
right from the highway’s
middle lane to the median
and set the car in park,
but could not control my thoughts–
chest throbbing, engine thrumming.
I had to step out and breathe
before I could convict the
quartz intending to harm me.
All smooth and small, I was not
sure which was the right rock,
scanning gravel to see several
similar enough. But the wolf
among them, I know, wanted to
break the glass, blind me
and puncture my jugular, only
for me to be saved by a surgeon
who would never fully believe
the story. I avoided death this time,
alive on the side of the road, looking
back in search of a falling rock sign.
(originally published in Bond Street Review, Winter 2021)
Cracked Windshield
Sudden the stone that cracked
the windshield, the storm that
struck the heirloom oak– you
ask for rain, beg for answers.
Soaked hands steer through
the blindness of the blur–
ten years now since Dad
merged into the final lane,
his pass misjudging distance
from collision, and that night
Mom heard a screeching
in her bedroom like a crow
passing from another world,
a bleak siren thrusting her
to darkness her headlights
could not cut through.
(originally published in Kingdoms in the Wild, Winter 2021)
Broken A/C
on the highway heading home
memorial day weekend sweat
takes my shirt off lets the sun
roast me through open window
wind fanning I’m so hot I say
to each friend passing before a
calm stretch I slow down horses
merge into my lane in a white
trailer why the long faces oh
they are way hotter than me
(originally published in Erothanatos, 2021)
Deer
Driving home from work tonight
on half-constructed roads, wet
with already-drying rain, ahead
of me a brown truck darts through
two busy lanes to get on his way.
How deerlike, I think, and
nothing more of it, until I’m
at a stoplight with unusual traffic,
and people congregate on sidewalks,
where there was recently emptiness,
a dread in the air, like construction
on these familiar streets that started
happening just outside of awareness.
A blue basketball rolls briskly in front
of my car, and two boys scream in
the silence of my Spotify, and I
wonder if I should pull over to
return the ball safely but I just drive
by and glance into the rearview mirror,
where one of them sprints from his yard
to his neighbor’s, through the converging
traffic, and I just try not to think
about it as I round the corner.
(originally published in Thirteen Myna Birds, Winter 2022)
28th Street Bridge
Every time I drive the 28th St. Bridge I always make the joke
to myself– should I really be driving on this?
It’s a paunchy punchline to no one and still I apologize for it–
a comment on the bridge’s chipped green paint and rusted
hinges, the (perceived) rickety short-distance, its creaking (I
don’t hear a thing). How close I’ve been to a laugh, some snicker
into an abyss– I’ve said much worse to people and not apologized,
driving over the strip after a fight with my lover, suspended
in the air a silence like tracking a FedEx truck with a package
you know will reach you but when? That apology– the tethering
between the space of sound, the hum of a hungry engine,
covalence of steel and structure bonding across a void.
(originally published in where is the river, Winter 2021)
Mid-Ohio
Wheels spinning,
the tanker trailer bears
down the highway.
The buzzsaw precision
of power structures–
thin, bald trees–
wheels spinning
in isolated towns–
American flags
flat and paved,
70 mile per hour signs
close and sharp.
(originally published in OVERHEARD, Winter 2022)
North on the 101 Toward Portland
One moment I am breaking– nearly
out of gas at Junctions Pass. Another
mile before construction stops me:
it’ll be a few, a truck has to load up.
The first pause on this day of near-
death began in San Francisco
on my sister’s couch– I shared a Lyft
to my car in Potrero Hill with
Amy– the same name as the girl
I left the day before, but I kept
going. Almost ran someone over.
Strayed near a swerving taxi off
the crosswalk. Lost attention when
a light turned green, ignored horns.
This crystal absent-mindedness–
too many things happening I
never had a chance to process
what I was driving from.
But how weeds grow on the
bark of redwoods. How some
hills are angled such that their trees
live sideways, and then you wonder
how they bear their own weight.
You just wonder.
(originally published in The Local Train Magazine, Summer 2020)
Southbound in February
Almost swerved to Akron
to delay our southbound silence
before another car skidded into steel.
We smoked exhaust
with sedans which scrunched
around us. Wiper squeals
revealed hymnal landscapes
through murky glass.
I revel in footprints buried by snow
yet do not know what–
if our black tires composed
cadenzas in the slickening slush,
ambulance’s red, beating
bongos thumping toward us
–what we could have said
that would have ever been enough.
(originally published in The Slag Review, Winter 2017)