View from Breezewood

Andrew Sargus Klein

Overlap:
bad TV reception;
heat; ghosts; exhaust.

You drop down here
from a curve so sharp,
semis move slower than birds.
Three gray trajectories,
Route 30 and Interstates 70 and 76,
conjoined in a prism of somewhere.
Something spreading
or retreading,
the space conveys;
cars pulling bodies
create heat under the sun—
They shout because they’re winning
They shout because they’re winning
They shout because they’re winning
—who stops or goes through unannounced?

The ghost of Thurman Munson,
overhead in the ghost
of a flaming Cessna,
follows the lights of the PA Turnpike.
The ghost of Zachariah Walker
follows the trail of headlights
on the ghosted skin of the earth.

The scene is tired,
forgets itself and the gauge.
What is speaking through the radio,
the tinny connection to everywhere.
How small is experience inside
a car inside an atmosphere.

How the grid becomes a net
becomes the last thing holding
the earth to its promise
to keep moving.

Overlap:
gum; asphalt; breath and ash;
the hills of Southern Pennsylvania.

There is an unbroken ribbon
of gray between here
and almost anywhere else.
There is a very broken ribbon
of bodies between here
and almost anywhere else.
Their blood regroups,
heavier, with fireworks
and the memory of exit wounds,
of flesh turning into exhaust.

Bio
Andrew Sargus Klein lives, works, and performs in Baltimore. He is an editor for Platypus Press (UK), and his poetry can be found or is forthcoming in The Offing, Big Lucks, Wildness, Everyday Genius, and other venues. He holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Baltimore.