 The Back Roads
from Vengeful Hymns
What you need is a midlife crisis-mobile
with precision rack-and-pinion steering
for cornering these ninety-degree turns
past farmhouses that were in ruin thirty
years ago, ruined still and still lived in
even though their porch roofs have collapsed.
Junked cars with halos of unmowed grass
guard modular homes prewired with failure,
and the abandoned Pentecostal church
could be bought for a hymn. Yard sales display
chipped bric-a-brac on folding tables,
tarnished swag left out for weeks and covered
by tarps like outsized magicians’ handkerchiefs.
Yank them away and you’d expect to see
entire flocks of carefully stuffed white doves.
You could buy yourself everything you need
to be someone else—unreflective mirrors,
bladeless razors, an hourglass made from
empty fifths of whiskey glued together
mouth to mouth as if kissing, except not.
You’re you, though, and the road straightens out,
so you speed past the battered stands of fresh
vegetables, the orchard of blueberries
whose fruit you’re offered only if U-Pick.
Like happiness, you think, as it shrinks away.
Back to Poetry |
