Trails of Ink Stranded on the Asphalt
Hybrid Prose Poem: Getting unblocked
--
“I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.” — Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck”
Crumpled
a hood, folded in on itself
metal/rumpled/wrinkled
wrecked.
How To Climb Out of This Crenulated Car
— an optimist might call this dead-end devastation braille and touch its lines tenderly, scan its ridges for lessons not yet learned, secret sentences guarded by the bluffs and basins, encoded in a car bonnet as creased as mislaid laundry
crinkled/crumpled/crashed
the motor revs and revs but the wheels?
misaligned. steering
wheel askew
(I am no mechanic but) the muffler sounds congested — it coughs/coughs/coughs a staccato sound without a signifier. deflated typo tires sag wretchedly, vital iridescent fluids leak — trails of ink stranded on the asphalt. the headlights? unable to illuminate — empty eyes (mind the sharp edges) finding no things beyond but a bleak and unblinking darkness
a battered
origami language, lashing
paper/rumpled/wrinkled
ravished.
a corduroy map (crimped)
jagged Jenga thoughts jumbled, jostled
sputter/splatter
sentences scrambled.
ambiguous lines — limping
along, too variegated
to navigate, careening into
cul-de-sacs (mirrors reflecting
more mirrors)
signs stutter asunder
colliding colluding collapsing
clash.clang.clonk
leading to —
STOP.
Not every rattle-trap wreck is a crime scene filled with clues, a suitcase of stories to unpack, a lucid etiology of existence.
