Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Transcript of Driving: a poem (PDF)
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/driving-a-poem-pdf 1/30
Drivinga poem
by
Emmett Michie
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/driving-a-poem-pdf 2/30
I'm trying to remembernot a dream
but lying here in the morningfeels that way:
Elegy
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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On the bridge, leaving the city
the cables and supports just wentup
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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It's not alot to go on
: the glow off the instrument panelyour cigarettesthe six-pack, half an ounce, box of
Dexatrimssmall collection of tapes
and this stuff that rushes at youmisses
and isn't gone
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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attached to nothing
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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I remember remembering better
than anything else
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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I am not blessed
I have beenrandom kliegs of white lightin places
My year, my moment
this fear thatI was
How much do you get?
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Two Hundred miles of fog
-- no metaphor --from 109th St. to here
Just two cones of headlightsand the fog
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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The Golden State Parkway
was my first great lossI saw the sign just in timenot to be able to turn
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Forget it
Next exitGet off and get lost
again and again and again
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Where is the bag?
you know I think about thatWhere are the true souveniers?It seems to me touristshave been out and arounddriving me
and left all their postcards
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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The mind behind the times
-- the line is unclearThe windows are better:all those mornings' lightand the faces all those faces evershown
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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we
are a comfortable fitin the mornings we shoot for,we trywhen the light is thick and swimmingin
everything we know
All these years:stuffing your bra in your purse,
finding my keys your beat Datsun fading off at thelight
we have our
vampire moments
But I'm gonna find a cornerbuild something in sleep that
half-awake and you’re still breathingeats atlike a dream
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Who was looking? I
hadn't even turnedIt happens like thatit “transpires”
across two points
lightning betweenminarets
-- I don't know--
a sudden vision of James Whalemachines
and the deadare brought
back to life
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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The kind of night you would see
a demon or ghost by the side of theroad
probably hitchhiking
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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I lost my route again
some turn I should have madeand never saw
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Sloatsburg
EllenvilleOvidCohocton
An exchange in the dark
I creep up on too fastAnd the numbers don’t make itit’s gone
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Because this is not a story
I begin againwith a vision of Frances, pausedlike a doefor a second in my headlights.
And then she ran
down the streetdown the sidewalk
up the stairsup the coast and to Boston
summer gone
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Ever find yourself
going too fast beyond what you could seefor a second in your left lightStopping nowherein the quiet
in a place you think you have thegraceto move aroundAnd half-way through the K turn
you just want to stop and sleep
and remember it betterthan any place you had to go
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Light love
—isn’t that what they call it?“lightlove”
I think that means it’s easier to
carryaround
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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I got carried.
I got called out.The time to playand hands.
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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No dreams
a song as long and volatileas gasoline
well-soaked rags I tore from oursheets
and tiedeach morning to the night before
like a kite
I raninto the wind
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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I wonder what’s happening to the
worldHow’s it doing out therewhere someone can see
Everything that was real and hard
to meis shrouded
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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I want to praise the dead
but my dead are small and roundsomehowlike pebbles
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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She did know me.
I wish I’d shaved.I wish I wasn’t so cavalier lookingin my beautiful scarf, boots,and new beard,driving an expensive (borrowed)
new car.
She was the first personI found in the place,
peering into the window of a door.She “had nothing to do with me.”About that, she was clear.
I tried to tell her.
I’d come two hundred miles.She was even more terrifiedof the stranger.
I got back in the car.
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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This gauze bandage
that moves around meon the back wards of the nightwhat is that?
but tomorrow and tomorrow andtoday
and this little bit beaming out of my headlights—what is it? 45 feet?such a little way to see
in such a wide wide bandaged world
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Did it make you strong?
kneading the porcelain until the bubbles broke,taking something back in your hands—It’s not all you did in there. I
know
You see I gotta build something tooin the end
as hard and brittle as stone
I have a fantasy, sadand as happy as a good lonesomesong
when you hadn’t expected to hearoneDid it make you strong?
(You didn’t die. Youtold meYou don’t know how that
changed the news)
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I should have brought more music
somethingto push open this world
8/7/2019 Driving: a poem (PDF)
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Why
am I trying to rememberyou and this stuff
Duff fires
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Wisps
curled from the door I left open behind meBy the lobby, whole ghosts
I just drove