How much of my life
has been an interstate
80 life? The upper middle
knife of this highway
has been a razor's edge
for me. I've popped into
and out of San Francisco
and dissolved East, as a Brooklyn,
into I-95, my many lanes
like a series of pains
that had me above and below the cross
road, Wisconsin and
San Diego and both Washingtons.
The longitude story has
driven more significance than
the up and down. China and
Europe loom like visible
horizons, watching with
their older eyes the aging
of my young man gone
West, West, West. I rest
now, almost as far as I
can go without fully pacifying
my escape pulse, my heart
of lossy offramp waves. I am not
an onion. I am more like
a split open banana, with
three long segments, father
(lost), spirit (tossed),
and son (old enough to locate
places as they arrive).
Roman Ryan 