Excerpt from Expressway , a work in progress

                                   "Don't make natural what isn't." 

                                                                               Jacques Derrida

 

Merge onto I-81 S (Crossing into PENNSYLVANIA). 124.1 miles

 

The expressway is the future.

 

The expressway is the market.

 

The expressway is the line endless.

 

The expressway contains multitudes.

 

The expressway directs and projects.

 

The expressway with its chapel and truck stops, its whorehouses and science centers, its indiscriminate will to connect.

 

 

**

 

They are outside, moving things.

 

Under the sun moving things.

 

On the horizon moving things.

 

This one sweeping.

 

All across the land men out on back steps looking.

 

When a man looks what does he see?

 

When a man with his hardhat, when a man in boots.

 

When a man reaches out his hand.

 

When a man becomes a man.

 

When a woman becomes a man.

 

When a woman looks at a man.

 

When a woman in her hardhat, when a woman in boots.

 

When a man sees a woman.

 

When the woman is not young.

 

When the man is not yet old.

 

When the day is long.

 

When the day is cool and longing.

 

When the woman is nowhere to be found.

 

When the man with his stop sign.

 

When the cars, all of them surround us.

 

**

 

Thinking is not hostile.

 

She insists against the grain.

 

**

 

The poem refuses to start from a position of safety and end in a position of safety having momentarily revealed a tiny fracture in human existence, the equivalent of a fly (a very small one, possibly a fruit fly even) in the chardonnay, or perhaps even more revelatory, a dose of chemotherapy (but not yours), a glimpse into the abyss (a tiny one, twice removed), and back to the front porch (this could be yours), before the next sip, because the poem is a connector, the poem is not a country lane, there is nowhere that doesn't lead here, there is nowhere here cannot find there. Everywhere is capable of being here now. There is nowhere this is not. There is nowhere I.

 

**

 

Oh little expressway, miracle of expressway, upended galaxy, extended Adirondack slither, downhill from Syracuse to Manhattan, glorious, glorious, no longer carrying but being us, we moving everywhere, all over the globe.

 

 

 

 

Take the PENNSYLVANIA TURNPIKE exit- EXIT 194- toward US-6 / US-11   CLARKS SUMMIT. 0.1 miles

 

 

"I came back to the meadow. I could not shake the memory of a train."

(E. Willis)

 

This poem stinks of dynamite.

 

There are ideas here you may not like.

 

Things have already been ingested.

 

Long ago, the fine print like talcum powder.

 

Long ago you already said yes.

 

Long ago a deal was struck, something about pebbles and the weave of blankets.

 

Certain matters have been undertaken.

 

Prior to this he had no experience.

 

Let sleeping cars lie, she said, let little dogs go.

 

Now that you are accustomed to signing the waiver without reading.

 

Now that you are willing to say yes.

 

Now that you are willing.

 

**

 

It's the order of things that keeps her up at night. (This is not a poem, she asserts with much exclamation.) Everywhere they are screaming. Listen, the whole goddamn apple cart is upended and you worrying about couplets?

 

**

 

A stitch in time.

 

A couplet in defense.

 

All poetry a fort, walls, a curb, what we are afraid of crumbling.

 

She now suggests, pointing

Outward, herself pointing

A finger juts

Outside the poem, now

Becoming a system of pointing

 

(No, not a system of owning)

 

Everyone is always upholding

A system of containing that is concrete

 

(No, not a vessel overflowing)

 

Her finger, pointing exits

The idea of everything

Fitting neatly

On your shelf, or shelves

For filing

(No, it is not your moon)

(No, I am not your begonia)

(No, there is no end to this)

 

**

 

His shelf would not hold

His shelf hung

His shelf made exits and entries

Almost unbearable

His shelf and how he made it

His shelf and all it contained

His shelf and no room for others

His shelf the smell of it lingering

His shelf never could reach

His shelf the most interesting thing not seen

His shelf unreachable

His shelf its miraculous order

His shelf all it contained

His shelf where the undertow never reaches

His shelf all of his blood

His shelf above my head twisted

His shelf nailed and nailed

His shelf transubstantiation

His shelf on bricks

His shelf a mortar

His shelf the aggregate composition of it

His shelf and all that he did not leave

 

**

 

Seventeen jugs on the church floor

Needing order

Now sixteen because it is even, and

Random

 

Several inches of brick

Several inches with three gashes

Several inches protruding

Several inches that want inclusion

Several inches gashing and protruding

Several inches without counting

Several inches solid

 

**

 

Beautiful, beautiful the day stretching, bird like, yawning from its nest, unaware of its essentialness, not all caught up in itself, not googling itself admiringly, just being its daily self, how we all ride its coattails. The day stretching, humid and damp, bringing no good news but itself passing a shadow over us, under us, the day stretching ambulances and sparrow song, honking on Atlantic and Flatbush, moving past Magic Johnson's Savings and Loan, its yarmulked peak and promise of luxury condos, beautiful, beautiful, the dying pansies and the face of noon, the tightening at the back of the knee, the reaching.

 

**

 

There is nothing between me and my poems.

 

There is nowhere between me and my expressway.

 

**

 

Fleeting, fleeting, the back of your heels, the salt on my tongue.

 

**

 

Beautiful, beautiful how her back arched, there, the lift of it, the chin up, beautiful the chin, the elbow, beautiful the knee, the ankle, the straining shoulders, the red brick behind her head, pools of light, outside angry women yelling, something harsh when I press my thumb to the back of your leg (this has no business here, but it remains).

 

This has no business here.

 

Remain.