9/22/2019 poetry: sina queyrasENDLESS INTER-STATES 1 They go down to the expressways, baskets In hand, they go down with rakes, shovels And watering cans, they go down to pick Beans and trim tomato plants, they go down In wide-brimmed hats and boots, passing By the glass-pickers, the Geiger counters, those Guarding the toxic wastes. They go down Remembering the glide of automobiles, the Swelter of children in back seats, pinching, twitching, Sand in their bathing suits, two-fours of Molson’s In the trunk of the car. They go down, past The sifters, the tunnellers, those who transport Soil from deep in the earth, and are content To have the day before them, are content to imagine Futures they will inhabit, beautiful futures Filled with unimagined species, new varieties of Plant life, sustainable abundance, An idea of sufficient that is global. Or, Because cars now move on rails underground, The elevated roads are covered in earth, Vines drape around belts of green, snake Through cities, overgrown and teeming With grackles and rats’ nests, a wall Of our own devising, and the night Watchmen with their machine guns Keeping humans, the intoxicated, Out. I am sorry for this vision, offer You coffee, hot while there is still Coffee this far north, while there is still news To wake up to, and seasons Vaguely reminiscent of seasons. 2 Web-toed she walks into the land, fins Carving out river bottoms, each hesitation A lakebed, each mid-afternoon nap, a plateau, Quaint, at least that is my dream of her, Big shouldered, out there daydreaming The world into existence, pleasuring herself With lines and pauses. How else? What is a lake But a pause? People circling it with structures, dipping In their poles? Once she thought she could pass by Harmless. Scraping wet shale, her knees down in it, she Tries to remember earth, that ground cover. She tries To reattach things, but why? What if the world Is all action? What if thought isn’t glue, but tearing? She sits at the lake edge where the water never meets Earth, never touches, not really, is always pulling Itself on to the next. 3 Now she sits by her memory of meadow, forlorn, shoeless. She could scoop PCBs from the Hudson, she is Always picking up after someone. But what? What Is the primary trope of this romp? Where her uterus Was the smell of buckshot and tar, an old man chasing Her with a shotgun across his range. Cow pies and Hornets’ nests, gangly boys shooting cats with BB guns, Boys summering from Calgary, trees hollowed out, Hiding all manner of contraband goods. When she peers In the knotted oak, classic movies run on The hour, Scout on the dark bark, Mildred Pierce with a squirrel tale wrap. Nature is over, She concludes. Nature is what is caught, cellular, Celluloid. She sticks a thumb in another tree, a Brownstone, a small girl—her heart a thing locked. It’s been so long since she felt hopeful. (Perhaps nature Is childhood.) The morning after Chernobyl Out there with tiny umbrellas. All those internal Combustions. This is a country that has accepted death As an industry, it is not news. She has been warned. Her ratings sag. She scans her least apocalyptic Self and sees mariners floating, Ben Franklin penning daily axioms, glasses lifting From the river bank, planked skirts on Front, China-like through the industrious, thinking, traffic Clogged city, its brick heavy with desire for good. Memory of meadow, Dickinson an ice pick scratching Wings in her brain: if you see her standing, if you move Too quickly, if you locate the centre, if you have other Opportunities, by all means if you have other opportunities. 4 Abondoned mine shafts on either side, those Tight curves between Kaslo and New Denver, Hairpin at glacial creek, splash of red Bellies muscling, streaming up, we see them From the open window. Or once did. Even here? Salmon stocks diminish, mammals dying off. No, he said, not in your lifetime. Vertical; Traces where the charge went off, Ruggedness is your only defence, he Said, be difficult to cultivate, navigate. Offer No hint of paradise, no whiff of Golf course. Uninhabitability your only Recourse. Lashed, that moment, prolonged Leaving, her father on the roadside Dreaming his world fitting in some place, Without being reigned in, her father’s fathers Throwing rocks down on Hannibal, Straddling the last large elm in the valley, Knowing where and how to lay the charge, or Sucking shrapnel from an open wound, The lambs all around, bleating. 5 Which liftetime? Beyond what brawn? Who Knew where the road would take us? Neat, neat, the rows of apple trees There in the valley, red summers, the heat Of Quebecois pickers, VWs in a circle, Firepit and strum. Men from Thetford Mines dreaming peaches, dreaming Clean soil. Hour upon hour the self Becomes less aware of the self. Beautiful, beautiful, the centre line, the road, This power station and control tower, these Weigh scales, these curves, that mountain Goat, those cut lines, these rail lines, that Canyon, the Fraser, the Thompson, The old highways hyphenating Sagebrush, dead-ending on chain Link, old cars collecting like bugs On the roadside, overturned, curled, astute, Memory of the Overlanders, Optimism, headlong into Hell’s Gate. Churn of now, The sound barriers, the steering Wheel, the gas pedal, the gearshift, The dice dangling, fuzzy, Teal, dual ashtrays, AM radio Tuned to CBC, no draft, six cylinders, The gas tank, the gearshift, easing Into the sweet spot behind The semi, flying through Roger’s Pass; the snowplow, the Park Pass, sun on mud flap, the rest stop Rock slides, glint of snow, the runaway Lanes, the grades steep as skyscrapers, The road cutting through cities, Slicing towns, dividing parks, The road over lakes, under rivers, The road right through a redwood, Driving on top of cities, all eyes On the DVD screen, All minds on the cellphone, The safari not around, but inside Us: that which fuels. 6 No matter, the slither of pavement is endless, Today the rain, a gold standard, all the Earmarks of, never mind, all is well, all Is well, and who doesn’t want to hear that? She gets on her scooter and roars, she gets On her skateboard and feels the air under Foot, she shakes out her hair, thinking of California, Thinking of allergies, thinking of the wreck Of place: who ever promised more? The iris With its feigned restraint, the daring tuba, The horn of shoe, utilitarian, delicate. Such Useful domesticity, such hopeful electronics. Once she disappeared by turning sideways. Now she finds it difficult to reappear. She lifts The sediment of time to her palm, feels it sift Between her fingers: bone, bits of event. Aren’t We all a bit fluish this century? Nothing bearing any Mark of otherwise. No prescript, nothing a bit of hope Won’t cure. Such a churn of optimism: That which consecrates will not kill. Maybe New York? She fits herself on an easterly course: been done, Been done, but what better than the well-trodden Path? Beautiful, beautiful, the seams Of the rich, their folded linens, Their soft bags of money. If it ain’t broke Don’t fix, if it ain’t resistant, don’t Wince, if it fits like a boot, then boot it. And so she does. Sina Queyras, “Endless Inter-States” from Expressway. Copyright © 2009 by Sina Queyras. Reprinted by permission of Coach House Books.
Source: Expressway (Coach House Press, 2009) |
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