"Highway" by Jennifer Powers
Road Fears
My hand grips the wheel until my fingers
leave burning half-moons on my palms
whenever my car twists and turns around I-81’s barricaded corridors. My heart throws itself
against my ribcage whenever behemoth 18-wheelers sandwich my Hyundai, playing some sick game
to make the smaller driver sweat.
Last night, I dreamt my car climbed mountain roads until houses looked as small as LEGO villages below. My vehicle slid to the right, almost smashed jagged rock, until I jerked from bed, rattled by a car horn
blaring outside. I leaned back, touched my legs,
felt my forehead, found no blood, then remembered
the charred car I saw hauled away
on the Turnpike, weeks before the dream,
the stench of smoke thick
as my car inched through tortoise traffic to an exit.
At 18
He marched through February sleet and snow, shuffled through protest cages like cattle, billy clubbed by Philly PD, months before bombs,
pummeled Baghdad, before his sign’s red ink smeared and looked like blood dripping on his black boots.
He defrosted his numb cheeks and ice-gnawed hands over hot cocoa in a café where June Bugg,
his activist lover who smelled like autumn,
designed DIY flyers stamped with Howard Zinn’s words- War is the enemy of humanity.
At open mics, he signed his name Peaceful Pete, rasped Dylan covers over his out-of-tune Epiphone, backed by June Bugg’s tambourine chimes.
After 3-song sets, they sparked cigarettes that burned like coals against the night sky.
A decade later, June Bugg married a banker, slips to South Street bookstores now,
has an affair with lefty literature in aisles where her husband won’t catch her
reciting lines by Adrienne Rich and Muriel Rukeyser.
A decade later, he teaches history to youth that yawn when me mentions Zinn or Chomsky, but he still lectures and trusts one of them will pick up A People’s History, enroll in an activist army, raise a picket sign,
join him on the streets against the next war.
Country Girl
She lives along Route 6,
where fracking trucks and tractors rumble along the only highway in and out of towns
named Noxen, Wyalusing, specks on maps,
a road that ascends the mountain to a point where clouds and fog could swallow cars,
spit them out at the bottom of a hill.
At night, she plugs her ears with headphones, ignores frogs croaking louder than car horns.
In summer, she roams Main Street,
where orange hunting suits and rusted antiques
hang from shop windows.
She moves to McDonald’s when streetlights flicker on, fishes for change to buy a soda,
her price to stay and talk to friends
just as bored by bucolic farmland and lookouts
where teens turn their car lights low,
slink in their seats, blow off another bible study.
She collects college mail from Ithaca,
Boston, Syracuse, imagines crowded cafes, bus stops, bustling hallways, students scurrying to class.
She plots how best to leave,
how to let her parents and town down easy,
like a broken-hearted, bad date,
how to avoid a life dressed in soiled clothes,
bobbing on a tractor with a busted seat.
Road Fears
My hand grips the wheel until my fingers
leave burning half-moons on my palms
whenever my car twists and turns around I-81’s barricaded corridors. My heart throws itself
against my ribcage whenever behemoth 18-wheelers sandwich my Hyundai, playing some sick game
to make the smaller driver sweat.
Last night, I dreamt my car climbed mountain roads until houses looked as small as LEGO villages below. My vehicle slid to the right, almost smashed jagged rock, until I jerked from bed, rattled by a car horn
blaring outside. I leaned back, touched my legs,
felt my forehead, found no blood, then remembered
the charred car I saw hauled away
on the Turnpike, weeks before the dream,
the stench of smoke thick
as my car inched through tortoise traffic to an exit.
At 18
He marched through February sleet and snow, shuffled through protest cages like cattle, billy clubbed by Philly PD, months before bombs,
pummeled Baghdad, before his sign’s red ink smeared and looked like blood dripping on his black boots.
He defrosted his numb cheeks and ice-gnawed hands over hot cocoa in a café where June Bugg,
his activist lover who smelled like autumn,
designed DIY flyers stamped with Howard Zinn’s words- War is the enemy of humanity.
At open mics, he signed his name Peaceful Pete, rasped Dylan covers over his out-of-tune Epiphone, backed by June Bugg’s tambourine chimes.
After 3-song sets, they sparked cigarettes that burned like coals against the night sky.
A decade later, June Bugg married a banker, slips to South Street bookstores now,
has an affair with lefty literature in aisles where her husband won’t catch her
reciting lines by Adrienne Rich and Muriel Rukeyser.
A decade later, he teaches history to youth that yawn when me mentions Zinn or Chomsky, but he still lectures and trusts one of them will pick up A People’s History, enroll in an activist army, raise a picket sign,
join him on the streets against the next war.
Country Girl
She lives along Route 6,
where fracking trucks and tractors rumble along the only highway in and out of towns
named Noxen, Wyalusing, specks on maps,
a road that ascends the mountain to a point where clouds and fog could swallow cars,
spit them out at the bottom of a hill.
At night, she plugs her ears with headphones, ignores frogs croaking louder than car horns.
In summer, she roams Main Street,
where orange hunting suits and rusted antiques
hang from shop windows.
She moves to McDonald’s when streetlights flicker on, fishes for change to buy a soda,
her price to stay and talk to friends
just as bored by bucolic farmland and lookouts
where teens turn their car lights low,
slink in their seats, blow off another bible study.
She collects college mail from Ithaca,
Boston, Syracuse, imagines crowded cafes, bus stops, bustling hallways, students scurrying to class.
She plots how best to leave,
how to let her parents and town down easy,
like a broken-hearted, bad date,
how to avoid a life dressed in soiled clothes,
bobbing on a tractor with a busted seat.
