“Where I Turn Bad” by Michelle Bonczek
Spring 2008, Volume 32, Number 1
| I start thinking of flammable material, the kind | ||
| we buy cheap from India | ||
| but then I remember my grandfather’s story | ||
| about a chapel carved out of salt. White steeple, white | ||
| door, white people. We’ve been here way too long. | ||
| So when the light changes, I speed | ||
| until you and I glide | ||
| over the freshly laid road, the smooth road | ||
| we fucked into existence, only you | ||
| are not in the car and the white line that splits | ||
| the road in half, reminds me of how | ||
| we cannot live without salt. But this all has to do | ||
| with the road. I light a cigarette, change | ||
| the subject, only I do not have cigarettes | ||
| and don’t smoke. The road is black | ||
| like someone else’s lungs. The cilia grow | ||
| hard, like art, from the tar. Sculptures, scars, bread. The road. | ||
| The turn I made at the light is illegal. But it’s the one | ||
| that brought me | ||
| to you. I’m illegal not because I’m too young | ||
| or because I’m a virgin in some country | ||
| where virginity is collateral for land, or wine, | ||
| or salt, a country in which you are not a king or a pirate | ||
| washed ashore a beach whose shells tongue your ear | ||
| when you’re not listening. | ||
| You don’t kiss me because of this, | ||
| only you do and I like it and I kiss you back, which is how | ||
| we get the road. The smooth one. A story | ||
| about our lips and our legs entwining like jelly forms. | ||
| My tongue licks your salt | ||
| like a deer. Shhh. I’d be hunted and stoned to death | ||
| should they hear, as this culture is not one | ||
| in which this would happen, but one in which a woman | ||
| can be arrested for carrying too many | ||
| vibrators on a Texas highway. Good thing | ||
| I took the one out of the glove box. Pass the bread. Here, I offer you my wrist, | ||
| soft as yours, see, curved as a doe | ||
| trust me. Though you have and I’ve broken it. | ||
| Not the wrist. The trust. But | ||
| you know what I mean. In the distance, September | ||
| burns maples into rubies and gold. | ||
| If you follow | ||
| my wrist to my finger, you will see me | ||
| pointing in a different direction toward a sky | ||
| tossing and turning in diamonds. | ||
| This is the way | ||
| I am going. | ||
| Hold out your thumb | ||
| before I change my mind, before the road turns. | ||
Michelle Bonczek teaches poetry, literature, and women’s studies at Western Michigan University where she is a Ph.D. Candidate in Creative Writing. In Fall 2007 Sage Hill Press released Writing Assignments: The Book, which she co-authored with the editors of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, a literary journal she co-founded and co-edits www.redactions.com. She completed an MFA at Eastern Washington University, and an M.A. from SUNY Brockport. Her poems, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, are forthcoming in Green Mountains Review, Puerto Del Sol, and 50/50.
Tags: Spring 2008