Expressway

This poem resembles urban sprawl. This poem resembles the freedom to charge a fee. The fee occurs in the gaps. It is an event. It is not without precedent. It is a moment in which you pay money. It is a tribute to freedom of choice. Reality is a parking lot in Qatar. Reality is an airstrip in Malawi. Meanwhile the expressway encloses, the expressway round and around the perimeters like wagon trains circling the bonfire, all of them, guns pointed, Busby Berkeley in the night sky. Expressway exposes the paradox of modern mobility: the more roads and connections we build, the more separate we feel. Sina Queyras has written a bravely lyrical critique of our ethical and ecological imprint, a legacy easily blamed on corporations and commerce, but one we've allowed, through our tacit acquiescence, to overwhelm us. Every brush stroke, every bolt, and nut, every form and curve in our networks of oil and rubber, every thought and its material outcome - each decision can make or unmake us.

Poems.

Expressway -- i: the endless path of the new -- solitary -- a memorable fancy -- ii: this is not my beautiful poem -- cloverleaf medians & means -- a memorable fancy -- iii: because every road is made with dynamite -- endless inter-states -- a memorable fancy -- iv: crash -- crash -- v: some moments from a land before the expressway -- lines written many miles from grasmere -- vi: the endless hum -- progress -- murmurings, movements or fringe manifesto -- a memorable fancy -- vii: misdirections -- acceptable dissociations

Divining rod, or how to find a neural pathway hospital exit: emergency lane: hova memorable fancy -- viii: rest-stop culture or wal-mart nation -- the road is everywhere equally -- the grey hills of oxford -- three dreams of the expressway -- a memorable fancy -- ix: proverbs of hell -- notes and acknowledgements -- about the author