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Cousin Arlene
John Surowiecki
The last time I saw her was at her funeral.
She was telling me how easy it was for someone
her size to handle the big rigs she drove for a living
and how much harder it was for her
to learn how to read. She said plenty
of her trucker friends felt the same way.
One guy was 100% illiterate but hauled to LA
without ever getting lost. That was because
on his first trip, riding shotgun, he’d memorized
the whole goddam country! And you know
it wasn’t fumes that killed her or bad kidneys:
it was something she had no chance against,
something fucked up in the gears of things.
She said geography itself had turned on her.
Bridges heaved and interstates wobbled.
Her eyes dropped out of her head
and rolled all the way to Kansas City
where she passed folks who dressed in flags
and ate popsicles and no matter
how loud she blasted her horn at them
or how much she waved and yelled,
she was, as she’d always been, en route.
—
John Surowiecki has written fourteen books of poetry in varying shapes and sizes; the most recent, The Place of the Solitaires: Poems from Titles by Wallace Stevens (Wolfson), was published in 2022. Prizes include: the Poetry Foundation Pegasus Award for verse drama, the Nimrod Pablo Neruda Prize, the Washington Prize, a Connecticut Poetry Fellowship, and the silver medal in the Sunken Garden National Competition. Also, his Pie Man won the 2017 Nilson Prize for a First Novel. Poetry publications include: Alaska Quarterly Review, AMP, Carolina Quarterly, Folio, Gargoyle, Margie, Oyez Review, Mississippi Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, Rhino, The Southern Review, Tupelo Quarterly, West Branch, and Yemassee.
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