Expressway. Sina Queyras
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people in their houses, passing women, men
Dressing, men unearthing, smoke pluming, what
Future? What the apple tree remembered? Not
Even the sound of fruit. If a body is no longer a body,
Where is memory? If a text is no longer a text,
Where is body? If a city is no longer a city, what road?
If future no longer has future, where does it look?
She snaps her cellphone closed: no one. Alone.
The century is elsewhere. She turns her back,
Swallows her words. She will do anything for home.
A MEMORABLE FANCY
At the toll booth she stopped to ask who was in charge of the expressway, or future, the words slipping back and forth in front of her. A large-headed woman, her hair roped and lashed about her head, looked up and held out her hand: George Washington. Seven times.
I have no money, she said, suddenly aware that this was indeed a fact, as was the yoke around the woman’s upright neck. Her nostrils flared, her body strained against it, Al Green in the background. Are you a poet? she asked, meaning do you feel that tug? The roar of tires is the rhythm of my day, the woman said, every fourteen cars a sonnet. Behind her the city slickened: vehicles everywhere, idling, honking, revving, stiffening themselves against her. The braided woman did not flinch. George Washington, seven times.
I am lost, she said. Can you tell me where to start?
The braided woman’s thumbs smoothed the air. You can try Port Authority. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
In response to the woman’s kindness, she shared her latest vision: Louis XVI is alive and living in Washington, a staggeringly blind man filling his frame with BBQ ribs and glazed ham. Under his bed he keeps a rifle, thinking a cattle rustler might show up in the night. Deeply suspicious of his dreams he hires a young woman to stand in the corner and lash herself all night as he sleeps.
It doesn’t matter if I see her, he said, it’s knowing she is somewhere lashing herself.
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