each morning Western growls beneath me,
pummeled beneath wheels and vectored people.
she’s quiet over a river branch as wind, water,
tourist boats whistle beneath us. i hurtle north.
she sees my face glow with summer, autumn, winter,
that turns her asphalt to veins of ice til they buckle.
she shrieks at night outside my window
in defiance of the potholes that riddle her back.
each morning she heaves beneath my gaze
tracing ancient factory boundaries, roadkill,
and a white bicycle made memorial—
a woman laughs, cries, goes back to laughing.
i see houses once buried in the countryside,
now stranded too close to the street,
close enough their front yards became gravel pits
for shovels and kiddie pools to rust and die.
the police yard never has any motion,
nor does the cruiser, its pitbull nose imploded.
my mind follows the engine put through its
windshield, into a cab in forever-darkness.
i’m going to get my head screwed on straight—
she’s learned that about me and doesn’t care.
she worries enough about bugs itching her hide;
people and beetles are one-in-the-same and
a brick smokestack tilted at the sky tells me
this is where Addison forms the finish line—
this is where she almost falls silent as pavement
yields to trees and satellite dishes gawking at the sky.
i’m grateful each day she brings me here—
grateful in the way an ascetic is for food;
grateful in the way she is to know my visits
will one day be infrequent and gone.
Brian Clancy is a grad student at DePaul University in the Creative Writing and Publishing program. He primarily writes short horror fiction and poetry. His work has appeared in previous issues of The Orange Couch. He also likes movies and playing his guitar.