|
|
One PoemChristopher KennedyWHERE DOES THE CARPATHIAN HIGHWAY ROAM? Heidegger wore a bathing suit, or so I assume. All the great thinkers sunbathed when no one was looking. Who doesn't have a little island in the tropics somewhere in the vicinity of their northern township? I'm thinking of England now, rainy skies over quaint wooden bridges. Which doesn't answer the question: Where does the Carpathian Highway roam? Not through this noisy historical moment but somewhere in the Urals perhaps. I'm only guessing based on my perceptions of the nether regions on my fifth-grade map. Aren't we all victims of the limited perspectives of the lowest-rung employees at Rand McNally? That shade of pink China was forced to wear reminded me of an upset stomach and its popular cure. Here I go again, opening my friends' medicine cabinets under the pretext of concern for their well-being. Let's face it. I'm up for a good scandal even at the expense of the ones I purport to love. And if that makes me an American, so be it, so be the apple pie of pornography and unfit mothers. All the great thinkers had mothers who walked the floors with them, soothing their precious brain matter with camphor and lullabies. And so the highway roams in spite of my ignorance, and somewhere a baby begins to form a theory that puts two and two together. The maps evolve and the world gets a make over. All the great thinkers walk the floor with their idiot sons and daughters. No one knows where the Carpathian Highway roams. Christopher KennedyChristopher Kennedy is the author of three collections of poetry, Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (BOA Editions, Ltd.), which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for 2007; Trouble with the Machine (Low Fidelity Press), and Nietzsche's Horse (Mitki/Mitki Press). His poems have appeared in numerous print and on-line magazines and journals, including Grand Street, 5_Trope, The Threepenny Review, Mississippi Review and McSweeney's. In Posse: Potentially, might be . . .
Return |
