4
What sounds, what sympathy, what silence, what
Creation? What recompense? What word? What land?
What river bottoms once muscular, tracing lifelines,
Deltas, flood plains; what land bunching, ruffling,
What stones rolling, what wheels (wooden, steel,
Rubber), what riding out on horseback, what
Flick of wrist, tug of tether, blast of rock,
What melting of rubber, what extension of self, what
Squeak of progress, what eye, what level, what
Parcelling and flattening, what neatly bundling,
What legacy? What future? What expressway? What
Goat trail on steroids, what native path, canoe trail,
Wagon train, trail of tears, what aggregate composition,
What filleted history, what strata, what subplates,
What tectonic metaphor, what recoil, what never
Having to deal with the revulsion of self, only
The joy of forward, the joy of onward, the endless fuel:
The circles, the ramps, the fast lanes, the cloverleaf,
Perspective of elevation, the royalty of those views,
The Schuylkill, the Hudson, the Niagara, the skylines,
The people in their houses, passing women, men
Dressing, men unearthing, smoke pluming, what
Future? What the apple tree remembered? Not
Even the sound of fruit. If a body is no longer a body,
Where is memory? If a text is no longer a text,
Where is body? If a city is no longer a city, what road?
If future no longer has future, where does it look?
She snaps her cellphone closed: no one. Alone.
The century is elsewhere. She turns her back,
Swallows her words. She will do anything for home.
A MEMORABLE FANCY
At the toll booth she stopped to ask who was in charge of the expressway, or future, the words slipping back and forth in front of her. A large-headed woman, her hair roped and lashed about her head, looked up and held out her hand: George Washington. Seven times.
I have no money, she said, suddenly aware that this was indeed a fact, as was the yoke around the woman’s upright neck. Her nostrils flared, her body strained against it, Al Green in the background. Are you a poet? she asked, meaning do you feel that tug? The roar of tires is the rhythm of my day, the woman said, every fourteen cars a sonnet. Behind her the city slickened: vehicles everywhere, idling, honking, revving, stiffening themselves against her. The braided woman did not flinch. George Washington, seven times.
I am lost, she said. Can you tell me where to start?
The braided woman’s thumbs smoothed the air. You can try Port Authority. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
In response to the woman’s kindness, she shared her latest vision: Louis XVI is alive and living in Washington, a staggeringly blind man filling his frame with BBQ ribs and glazed ham. Under his bed he keeps a rifle, thinking a cattle rustler might show up in the night. Deeply suspicious of his dreams he hires a young woman to stand in the corner and lash herself all night as he sleeps.
It doesn’t matter if I see her, he said, it’s knowing she is somewhere lashing herself.
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