BROWSE Columns
✕
Mostly at the edge, on shoulder
or median, I see them through
peripheral vision, unless on a curve,
and if distracted by them, swerve
slightly, hitting the highway edge’s
rumbling loud-stripped warning.
A pattern of small, irregular objects,
black and grey, mostly, then larger
plastic pieces, torn and twisted,
like that piece of bumper by
the guardrail and almost hugging it,
and of course, the shards of glass,
scattered like the candy they throw
from the Mardi Gras floats, drunken
in disorder, random in its fall,
and the metal, now modernistically
rendered to violent sculptures.
So be it, the meaning is physical,
Newtonian—force equals mass
times acceleration and, wait for it,
the dénouement as motion ends, at last,
but not quite—someone had to sweep
and set these pieces to the side, leave
them as warning, as memento mori
of the death of things and those who’d
owned them, like the blackened gravel
by the tangled railing, spreading out
the shadow of once-bright flames.
Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, including 2River, The Bellevue Literary Review, Blood and Thunder, The Closed Eye Open, Dappled Things, The Examined Life, Lifelines, Natural Bridge, Please See Me, WLA, Work, and The Write Launch. He has also published creative nonfiction in New Letters and The North American Review. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript of poetry dealing with issues of medicine, illness, and loss (Vital Signs) that has been accepted by Finishing Line Press.
