Thirteen Ways Of Looking At An Overpass

The overpass shouldered the highway
like a god of expedience,
its head epileptic with midnight traffic
soon forgotten in flashes.

The two teenage boys
tossed their innocence away
in the form of heavy
cinder-blocks,
crushing the skull
of some random woman
in her family minivan.

The columns of the overpass
were like the columns of the
Parthenon—
lofty, large, dense,
and, perhaps,
destined to puzzle
future archaeologists.

Beneath the Egyptian overpass
a car burned out, its blackened
shell
like a giant scarab
dead from rolling the sun
into the sky
for another day of
war.

The cars merged onto the highway,
the overpass
a river crossing of
wildebeasts,
and the tractor trailers but
crowding crocodiles
eager to cut them off.

The overpass collapsed like
the infrastructure bill,
its Left and Right sides as
uncompromising
as gravity.

The lampposts at night,
their haloes burning orange along
the facade of the overpass;
braziers burning along
the mysterious face
of a Sumerian temple beneath the moon.

A homeless man slept in the nook
of the overpass,
rain and wheels
composing a restless lullaby
for his drug-rattled head.

Walking home alone at night,
she sank beneath the shadow
of the overpass,
drawn down like Persephone
into lightless lands.

The joke went over his head
loudly,
like a semi
grinding eighteen wheels
upon the overpass.

He often rerouted
regret
like backed-up traffic
waiting for the police
to reopen the overpass—
with peevish hand gestures
and a few choice swear words.

Her body hovered above his,
navel up,
hands and legs in an overpass pose,
passion a surge of
rush hour traffic
along her erogenous lanes.

The overpass had no
emergency lanes,
much like life.