Road Song

• Facebook
• Instagram

Jed Myers

__________

I’ve ground my teeth to an aching, jaw
sore from a long clench while I searched
for a road out of a war, no knowing which

side I was on. And I dreamed a crossing—safe               
passage, no gate, no screamed inquisitions 
at gunpoint between wired-off halves of land—

not so much a road, rough stitch of truck-tread, 
trail of reddish stains like shadows 
the vanished have left, charry tracks

I imagined the ash remains of the angels’ 
ladder where Jacob had slept…no, 
not on anyone’s maps. And who’d walk it—

old ones who forgot not to set out?
Some young who’ve strayed from where they were 
told they belong? A few who hallucinate

floors of parted seas between burning walls?
Let alone all the souls forced from their houses, 
most without wagon or sack. Thought I saw

black plumes in the eyes that looked back. 
What could they hope? But this road I found,
I’d swear it’s unmined, it remains

in neither side’s charge, and in their head-
coverings, their hand-me-down shawls and scarves, 
in the drizzle of pulverized lives 

decorating their shoulders in death’s drab epaulets, 
the crossers have turned to a rhapsody’s notes, 
slow-cadenced as the stars’ patience with us. 

Listen, that shuffling between estranged towns, 
prayer-murmurs and curses in sister tongues—
it’s those stumblers who scuff their feet 

raw on the stones, who trip and lift themselves 
countlessly up off their hands and knees, 
who weave the lost way, home to home.

__________

Jed Myers is author of three books of poetry—most recently Learning to Hold (Wandering Aengus Press, Editors’ Award, 2024), and previously The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press) and Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award)—as well as six chapbooks. Recent honors include the Northwest Review Poetry Prize, the River Heron Poetry Prize, and the Sundress Chapbook Editor’s Choice Award. Poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Poetry Review, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, Southern Indiana Review, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Myers lives in Seattle, where he’s editor of Bracken.

__________

🢠 Back Next 🢡

To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program, please visit Submissions for details.