Photo by Ryan De Hamer on Unsplash
The I-29 overpass sustains such inordinate
clouds; one could drift so easily off into
wild strati, reminiscent of shooting cars.
One tracks time by the backpedaling of the
airborne divers overhead multiplex marques
and multiplex marquees and multiplex minds
fraught with reckoning thunderhead’s form.
Fist out of mouth, design absent alignment
when four lanes strip to one and then none
paved a stoned passenger’s premature exit.
Freon tastes like carbonated asphalt blent
with the eighth and final state of matter:
Vaporization, Iowa. Do not bother counting
aloud the seconds we’ll spend to free fall
because it has been and will forever be 12
seconds of flight toward terminal velocity
disguised as contrails of travelogues, but
who’s aware of azimuths, anyhow? Who could
appreciate, given adequate amounts of time
with speed, the magnificent, doming Earth?
Daniel Palensky is a graduate of the University of Nebraska Omaha's Writer's Workshop. This inclusion in Drunk Monkeys marks his first appearance of his writings in publication.