Song of the highway.

Animal cries of the city.

Slow roar of applause. 
America, coming in like a dream on the shortwave,

car door shutting like a gun. 
Some say it is hell, and some say just another, bolder paradise.

To the east is the mountain with sweet, sweet rain.

So much bastard beauty, broken music. 
A noisy country.

All too present outrage, honk and whistle.

I count the sirens.
I open my body to the funk of millions

of flowering cannabis plants, the cold salt froth

of the Pacific Ocean, the flame of the desert.
I hear America singing, doowop, doowop do.

She is lifting her hands like an orchestra. 
O the sound,

so beclamoured with

the jackal-yapping of coyotes. 
The air is full of spirits.

Squirrels scatter,

birds return from invisible worlds.
Raccoons whistle through the switchgrass.

Jackrabbits appear. Herds of taxi cabs.

Omegas of people. Babels of bloods. 
Warriors. Weirdos. A lowdown good-for-nothing so-and-so.

All the intention of wishes, forgiveness.

User-friendly righteousness.
Towns stack up like a tarot deck.

There are babies being pushed in strollers,

women in heels descending into the subway.
Night shifts meet

day shifts in passing.

Unaware. Unreflecting.
Men and women.

[They and they.] Women and women.

Men and men. 
Carload after carload of sorrow.

All-you-can-eat loneliness.

So many kinds of hunger.
All, one wave of notes in the dark gospel of the universe.



Note | This is a found poem arranged by the author and cites the work of Pauli Murray, Cynthia Dewi Oka, Ada Limón, Cynthia Cruz,

Diane Seuss, Linda Hogan, Chase Twichell, Gal Beckerman, Hala Alyan, Joanna Klink, Thomas Fuller, Walt Whitman, Crystal Williams,

Jay Deshpande, Vievee Francis, Cormac McCarthy, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Zakia Henderson-Brown, Jaswinder Bolina, Mong-Lan,

Melvin B Tolson, Terrance Hayes, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Kyle Dargan, Laura Buccieri, Jenny Xie, Donald Revell, Lucie Brock-Broido,

Barbara Ras and Tyehimba Jess, respectively and respectfully.