White Asphalt

A hundred-acre wide stretch of half-dead grass

bisected by a slash of gravel

a quarter-mile long

 

The drag strip

where bales of hay and the occasional deer

meet up to lay down rubber

 

The removable roof

fell off the back of the pickup years ago

shearing the latch clean off

so that it sits unfastened

in the acres of unkempt foliage

as the rust spreads in charred blotches

Across the surface of its spine

 

Tarmac bleached white

by midwestern sun

winks brilliance

demanding driver’s-seat visor yanking

to avoid blindness

While overtaking opportunistic expanses

occupied by ignorance and wild wheat

romanticized into opulence

 

The fifteen minute cruise

through burned-out neon

is torture in the back of a borrowed minivan

and the heat lamp cuisine thrown clear by the wayside

feels about as weighty as any ore

they could have pulled from the earth

before the union dissolved

 

An undersized t-shirt

stretched across hard young shoulders

whips across the strip on screaming two-stroke wings

accompanied by vulture calls

and the crushing wave of cricket song

blasting from evergreen subwoofers

Breaking the silence of their absence

Like the lonely whistle did all those years ago

When black lungs and blue collars

burst forth from the earth

to birth promise onto hope and

secure domestic tranquility

or

    something like that

 

So here I sit

Curled in the arms of hairgrass

blinding myself so I don’t have to see

what so desperately demands to be written off

and declared refuse

by the eve of revolution

No

It transcends condemnation

and defies expiration

And it certainly doesn’t want to be reduced to rhyming

in some

overused couplet

 

It don’t need your charity

And it sure ain’t accepting handouts

Might have something left to give after all

 

When the Ashland freight line

glides catastrophically over the tracks

just as the very soul of humanity is tearing for sleep

 

You can still hear the whistle

calling tradition into action

descending the creaking elevator into the heartland

 

And when the sun is setting

you can hear it dragging back up again

Face painted black with national blood

dying to wash the soot from its crying soles

But ready to swing the hammer once more

 

On the right kind of summer eve

You just need to call out to it

and it’ll be right there alongside you

 

Raising dust

against a thousand stars

 

This poem is about: 
My country
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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