Low like the mean dream
of Newark the sky must
have seemed to its builders.
Rickety now, unhinging,
I fear I’ll reach the end only
thanks to magic –witch cauldrons
soldered (eye of newt intact)
to forge this highway hubris.
Fifty year old rock cackles
on the radio, loud as
the chemical sunrise, as the car
lifts over fetid pools of sludge.
Below lies ballad country –
swamps of sawed-up bodies,
Saturday night specials,
punks in concrete shoes –
and I’m stuck with flat prose,
this gas-good, yawn-blue
compact, predictable and dull.
A skyway wants a speedster,
wants a singer, wants a lover,
wants a souped-up chrome finned
coup to ride the rising sky –
cattails humming, steel grates
singing shoop-shoop a capella
trusses bleeding rust
from America’s tied veins.
Paul Genega’s most recent publications are ALL I CAN RECALL (Salmon Poetry, March, 2013) and the chapbook A STONE FOR NINA (December, 2012). He teaches Creative Writing at Bloomfield College where he also serves as Chair of the Division of Humanities.
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