Excerpt from Interstate 40, Cycles I-V
By Paul McConnell
II.
Asleep on headrests
slick with pomade
Little Richard’s bodyguards
wait to be called
forward
into the nose of first class
where the boss
waits likes Mt. Rushmore.
Abolish, you say? But
Pyramids and columns always push
down before they fall.
Patience, like the plains, for the long awaited
snows that blanket the earth, a trickle like
the Red River moves a canyon wall,
Comanche protectorate no more.
We drive over the dust of
a thousand dead ponies
in a car built by new slaves
of paper governments,
stopping to watch the progress
of a beaver in a swollen pond,
ourselves up to mud and no good.
There’s nothing nameless here,
or rusted with answers
just old hillbilly music
and blues.