5:32
courses our car-shaped car our car cuts calculi in the woven
elements stirs up these small weathers as a gradient layer
cake of speeds radiates away i read equations on the
internet that i understand completely on an emotional
level some moments feel more viscous some drag is
characterized as parasitic the outside tries its best to keep
up as our rearview rewinds the splotched drive home
on the windshield and hood crash drops of self-destructive
rain they dance they disappear into their dance
partners dark arcs dark arcs wipers so sinister in
their monotonous suppression of the amoebic legions of
water reaching for a freedom that lies just outside the
frame when the rain sprays mistily from car back to sky
is it rain again? a small envelope of air cradles every
tumbling droplet the droplets expand the landscape as
they sew it all together you wake up in a blacked-out
America and someone flashes on a McDonald's sign i
am five hundred thousand drops of rain from home
i am only three
identical McDonald's
from where we first met
Feature Date
- December 14, 2019
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Copyright © 2019 by Andrew Dally
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Andrew Dally is a poet and programmer from Pennsylvania. His first chapbook won the DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press chapbook prize, and his poems can be found in Denver Quarterly, LEVELER, and The Boiler. He currently lives in Spartanburg, SC, where he helps run a micro-press called Condensery.
Tuscon, Arizona
University of Arizona
"Andrew Dally's poems turn the ubiquitous McDonald's in the American landscape into touchstone, into rhythm, via a language that feels brand new. Like a perfect playlist for a long road trip, this book fuses disparate elements to build a moving, intimate mythology for our time."
—Melissa Ginsburg
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