behind and flanking either side

behind and flanking either side

The wheels are whispers on the twelve-mile stretch 

of lightless lanes outside Atlanta. With trees 

that flank like handrails, the dark conveyor belt 

of two-lane freeway slurps him in the city’s 

gaping maw of tapered skyline teeth. 

Cresting a hill, the luminescent chicken pox 

of tail lights spot his wrinkled face, and he 

is eight again, his chicken-finger box 

half-eaten in his lap, his half-baked mother

behind the Cutlass’ wheel and telling him 

“baby I'm your home” as they leave another 

city shelter.

    Eighteen, he bought a rig

to roll the asphalt veins of states with signs

 that promised Smiling Faces Beautiful Places

or We Love Dreamers, but on a rural climb

he’d seen an otel sign without the H 

and cried because the symptoms clearly showed

that it had somehow spread to everywhere.

In truck-stop showers he scrubbed his body raw,

but learned the dirt was deep enough that water

was insufficient.

      An envelope of dark 

comes following and swallowing the strips 

of light-reflecting paint that disappear

beneath the sanctuary of the cab, 

and then the gritty shout of rumble strips

reminds him yet again the dark's behind

and flanking either side, and so he grips 

the wheel and eyes the road ahead, a man 
without a choice but to go on
and to go on.


published in Red Fez