Underpass
The Queen of I-90 whips by us
with semi trucks for roller skates
a highway, her derby flat track
She bends for the wind-up
then clean-clears the overpass
and sticks a rolling land
When she takes the offramp
to pick sneakers off the powerlines
she swaps restaurant signs
sticks them like sandwich toothpicks
One night, at Trey’s house, she came
scratching at the roof with long acrylics,
said with eyes the size of F-150 wheels
she couldn’t catch him, watched him drop
off the overpass into traffic, and how sorry
She skated off - weeks later I found her
hunched by the high school
cement slab for a nail file
I sat on the concrete beside her
until the skydown clapped open
and she climbed up and out
CHRISTIANNE GOODWIN is a writer and musician from Michigan. Oracle Smoke Machine, her art-and-poetry collaboration with painter Stephen Proski, is out with Staircase Books (Cambridge, MA). A selection of poems from Oracle were recently translated into Italian by poet Stefano Bottero and published by Nuovi Argomenti. She is a graduate of the Boston University MFA program and is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets University Prize and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship.
Midwest Review 