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Crow Hollow 19

NORTHWAY ROAD APPROXIMATELY

Peppermint candies huddle against the soft waist
of a large, melon-colored candle emitting musk
concocted in a lab by an apprentice for the head
technician . . . apprentice slaving for a bonus
to pay off second wife.

Sales clerk at an upscale department store, on
his feet twelve hours a day, dreams of what he
could be doing if only he were freed from the
burden of turquoise silks and calamanco wool.

Silly feathers adorn the eyelashes of silly planets
on the outskirts of some silly galaxy on the other
side of our warped space-god continuum.

The absurd croak from the holiest bullfrog east
of the Mississippi serenades the frilly edges of
lily pads the size of discarded tractor-trailer tires.

About the poem: I wrote “Northway Road Approximately” while hunkered down with Bob Dylan spinning from speakers hand built in Tennessee, plus a large scented melon-colored candle acting as sage for my dimly-lit room. It’s early April, and the blizzard that buried our neighborhood street has been melting a trickle at a time over the last couple of weeks. No matter, my head spinning with Bob has drifted further than the drifts that covered our street and house, drifted into an alternate universe still donning the tattered vestments of the universe it came from. I am home and quantum years from home at the same time approximately.

Murder Three, Summer 2016

The artist's space.

Alan Britt

Crow Hollow Books