The Crossroads
This is the place it happened. It was here.
You might not know it was unless you knew.
All day the cars blow past and disappear.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
Look at the sparkling dust, the oily smear.
Look at the highway marker, still askew.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
You might not know it was unless you knew.
– Joshua Mehigan / from Poetry (February 2010)
An Accident
Images here
You're simply sitting down. It's getting late.
The sky is a thick slab of premature dark,
metallic, of imponderable weight.
And noises start: a scratch, a whoosh, a bark.
Sometimes you read of accidents: a child
killed in a car, a freak wind raising hell
in an obscure American town, wild
storms of atoms raging inside a shell,
and it's like the room is just too full of you,
your senses, your own presence in the chair,
your breathing hands and feet, all pressing through
a visible integuement of air.
I watch you sitting down as on a stage.
The accident begins. You turn the page.