James King

Notes from Yesterday's Road

 For Clarke

there are parts of this country
where you get more country than you know

what to do with
& parts of this country

with just a small slice
of sky between trees

where northbound on the interstate
we looked out the window

like dogs at the undead
towns & cat’s cradle 

of electric lines at Liberty Wire
where old churches with decayed saints 

stand watch
where somewhere in Pennsylvania

you asked what people do
in places like this 

mostly roadwork
a man stooped on the shoulder 

placing orange cones like watchtowers
for the pagan kingdom 

of traffic
where I remembered 

the jagged spikes of concrete
proposed to hide 

nuclear waste dumps
the strange beauty 

of their warning—This place
is not a place 

of honor—nothing
is valued here— 

where I plucked the four-leaf clover
of exit ramps 

my memory
an exit ramp to time 

I had some proof
where we pulled off the highway & 

I smelled pool floats
the small red shingles rash 

on your back not yet
a cartography of pain 

where we drove by clapboard houses
& blue bursts of intention 

-al wildflowers & I learned
our mothers have the same name 

where it was
the dead of summer 

yes
but I imagined soft snows

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James King is a poet from New Hampshire and co-Poetry Editor for Bear Review. A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared in The Boiler, Passages North, Pithead Chapel and others. His work has received support from GrubStreet, Chautauqua and the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He lives in New Hampshire with his partner. Find him online at jamesedwardking.net.