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POETRY / Vaporization, Iowa / Daniel Palensky

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.