Our town has grown beyond itself & now must accommodate
a molasses tide overflowing the crumbling concrete corridors
construction constantly complicates our commute
we’ve had to learn tricks of the highway patrol train ourselves
to spot their rigs’ particular shade of cruel blue speeding w/out shame
still perpetually late throw my hands up apologize say that damn traffic you know
the chef—an aging anarchist—couldn’t care less says we’re entitled
to our hours still we delight in stealing seconds w/ our smoke breaks
after close we just disperse return via those same choked veins
spilling over w/ little cells tho soon we may all be less than the water
that comprises us our element turned too toxic for a thirsty earth
will anyone ever ask why we couldn’t help but fail to figure out
how to co-op our reality alongside strangers or disable authority
w/out derailing our entire society or get to our jobs w/out
wanting to murder even ourselves & it’s true absolutely
i participate in this process w/out hesitation tho i know between the axles
of 18-wheelers & locked in tight orbit like a carrion bird over every lexus
every muscle truck every tesla is a pound of death its constant
eye steered by coincidence aimed at all of us as butterflies in ancient migration
stamp windshields w/ their dust & fuckboys follow me like their tricked-out pickups
want to taste my sedan’s dirty secrets & i (especially in the city) force my own
front end w/in inches of most meandering minivans why do we wish we were instant
except in our final moments why i wonder in traffic as we sit all strangers
bumper to bumper avoiding eye contact usually at least one arm
aflame in setting sun’s rays can we not master our movement
from one paradigm to the next or see beyond our immediate atmospheres
thru our little windows to identify & address dangers of our own creation
do you think i ask my fellow cook it is because we are composed of empty spaces
each compelled to shorten distance bound to spiral inward &/or outward bound to fall
toward other bodies & their satellites stuck on this body beneath her ghostly satellite
& all the artificial ones besides wait ‘til winter he says nobody knows how to drive
in the snow then shows me a compilation of candid baby clips wherein they all wide-eyed
wail startled into utter breakdown w/ the unanticipated sound of their own gas
& i am grateful to recall it at the filling station to have loled over baby farts tho
there’s probably too many how much gas can one earth support & surely the newest
models are damned they say none of us will be around to meet them not even
the roads will droughts not have parched fires not scorched floods not inundated will not
the radio grow silent for once no more commercials for cars unaffordable between those
same few songs they played like everything new had already stalled & become memory
Garnet Juniper Nelson is a Queer/trans writer birthed & corrupted in the American high desert who now practices their craft from the Pacific Northwest. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno, their work has been featured in publications such as Rattle, Glassworks, Salamander, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Ninth Letter, Salt Hill, & Pidgeonholes, and has received nominations for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. Their manuscript angel/androgyne was most recently shortlisted for the 2023 Catamaran Literary Reader West Coast Poetry Prize.