A boy was born.

A mother felt betrayed.
On the road of her body the arterial turned.

The roads had lines. A ditch,
as any road might, for rainwater.

He came from that chrysalis-darkness.
A mother’s obsidian eyes, mostly shut.
He was parked in a box to help him breathe.

Pinned in hibernation, a needle
ready to pierce, tubes in his nose.

The road’s vanishing point:
the nipple at birth—untouchable.

He called in sick and got lost on the lane
beside his old house. Both drawn to and driven
from light. Roadside cedars canopy across

and touch in the nave of memory: prom night,
he fell asleep, missed the curve, the car crushing
the branches seeming both to claw and to catch.

 

Jeremy Voigt is a poet and teacher whose work has appeared in such journals as Post Road, Willow Springs, Washington Square, and Beloit Poetry Journal. The title poem of his chapbook, “Neither Rising nor Falling,” was featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He is co-founder of kahini.org.