Turner Wilson, Ohio, USA
I used to take the drive home at 20 over the speed limit,
only slowing when I reached the switchbacks
that ribboned up into the mouth of Indian Canyon.
I’d coast uphill and feel the whole car tilting from one side
to the other, my luggage sliding on sun-cracked
pleather seats. Evening coyotes wailing at the mouth
of the canyon like it was their wrathful god, here again
to devour them. The red dirt moan shifting into the choir song
of granite, split from the roots of beetle-eaten pine.
The taillights in front of me bobbing like wandering stars.
The reek of brake pads and metallic squealing pressing
hard on the roof of my mouth. Trying to keep my eyes
on the road. Trying to make myself yawn to pop my ears.
I can taste when the air gets thinner, feel it get softer,
like the softness of insurmountably large numbers
that keep breaking apart into smaller pieces
when you try to hold onto them. The vastness
pushing outward in variations of peach and cerulean,
always outward and upward, outward and upward, outward and upward.
Turner Wilson is a poet and MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University. He currently serves as Managing Editor for Mid-American Review. His work has previously appeared online at Quatrain.Fish and Dreams Walking.