Notes from Exile: The Roads
Log/Verse: daily reflections from prison, written every morning at my bunk. Part poem, part log book.
“The Roads” was first published in Electric Literature, a respected journal known for work that bridges lived experience and literary craft. I’m grateful to share the poem again here, in a format that lets its movement—through memory, radio static, and roads both real and imagined—unfold at its own pace..
THE ROADS
On certain days I can tune in a station from back home
on the radio that I purchased from the prison store
but only if I’m lying on my bunk in a certain position
and tuned a certain way
and the radio is turned upside down
but it comes in just barely
and staticky
and intermittent
so I have to turn the volume all the way up
and I always seem to catch the local traffic report
and how I’m gripped and uplifted
by what was once dreary and dull reporting
of delays on the Triborough Bridge
that I crossed thousands of times
or the George Washington Bridge
and its crushing merge
from the Major Deegan Expressway
that I always managed to just escape
on my commutes
and the FDR Drive
bumper to bumper
on all the northbound lanes
every evening
in my earliest working years
and I recall myself stuck
on all those highways
from the Kosciusko Bridge
after my first promotion
and the Verrazano Bridge
and its frightening length
approaching from the Grand Central Parkway
and the Tappan Zee Bridge
and its seeming fragile crossing
and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway
and its endless ramps and exits
piled on each other
and the Van Wyck
and its looming bridges
to make you choose
the Whitestone or the Throgs Neck Bridge
and the West Side Highway
and its unmatched view of the horizon
mixing its woodsy feel
and lurch of the forthcoming city crush
and the Hutchinson River Parkway
that was always the road home
and commuting on the impossible I-95
in early morning
and night after night
so I could almost draw its every mile
and the ridiculous Long Island Expressway
that just gets wider
but never shorter
and the dangerous New Jersey Turnpike
and its profile of tanks and smoke
that I drove so many times late at night
coming home from the Giants games
or returning from my sons’ college
or visiting friends and family
and business guys south of the bridge
and all those signs on it
like the Lincoln Tunnel
and Holland Tunnel
and exits for Manhattan
and all there
the summary of my life
and all its nostalgia
that was wrapped up
on all those roads
from my mother taking me to the dentist
to learning to drive
on the Cross County Parkway
with its narrow lanes
and hitchhiking to school
and to all those roads
taking my kids to hockey practice
and my daughter’s dance classes
that are so far removed
from the prison camp
where I reside now
in an unknown quarter
of northern Massachusetts
that I never heard of
and situated on roads
I don’t even remember arriving on
and only one local road
that cars pass through every day
with only silhouettes
of the people inside
but longing to be in one of them
going somewhere
or anywhere
this road may take me
and I don’t even know its name.
Read the original publication here THE ROADS
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