“The highways show our indifference to death, so long as it’s someone else’s.”
-Timothy Findley, Journeyman: Travels of a Writer
- My journey backward began
- on the highway somewhere between Boston and New York
- with a blue billboard
- protruding accusatorily from the tree line.
- A polar bear facing outward from the depths,
- eyes dark like midnight tides,
- mouth
- wide open as freeway plains
- submerged
- pleading.
- And even if the bear could’ve spoken a phrase
- it would’ve choked
- on the water that was
- further and further
- enveloping it.
- further and further
- on the water that was
- it would’ve choked
- A polar bear facing outward from the depths,
- protruding accusatorily from the tree line.
- with a blue billboard
- on the highway somewhere between Boston and New York
- Further down the highway, I spot
- black vertical pipes
- a hundred feet tall
- gleaming graphite tubes
- spewing smoke.
- Not black smoke: not so rare—
- black smoke
- as if from crematoria
- we find alarming
- I once reported to the 911 dispatch while driving through South Bend
- as it leaked into a side street
- so thickly that I could barely see.
- as it leaked into a side street
- Rather, it was gray:
- a light enough shade to be shrugged off as a geyser’s steam
- or as condensation,
- a foggy human fingerprint
- set firmly upon the blue.
- a foggy human fingerprint
- black smoke
- Not black smoke: not so rare—
- black vertical pipes
- The trees founded this ground
- I try to tell myself
- when I think of how their trunks
- seem to have sprouted around the highway,
- adapted to shade its pristine curves
- like jealous ivy
- or propaganda-poster pests
- greedily hoarding sunlight from the road
- which, whether or not
- it was the first thing to exist,
- most deserves to.
- it was the first thing to exist,
- adapted to shade its pristine curves
- seem to have sprouted around the highway,
- when I think of how their trunks
- I try to tell myself
- If I don’t think hard enough,
- it is like the Red Sea:
- entire ecosystems
- families of flora and fauna
- splitting for the passing of their betters,
- only to,
- with impossible ease,
- stitch themselves back together again.
- with impossible ease,
- only to,
- entire ecosystems
- it is like the Red Sea:
- I first came to understand the importance of highways
- in a middle-school Communications class.
- Everyone else seemed to know
- off the top of their heads
- every nearby exit on I-95.
- One girl proudly detailed which two exits would bring her closest to her house
- and which streets she’d take from there.
- A boy in that class was on my travel basketball team that year.
- During our practices at the local elementary schools
- when my coaches weren’t within earshot
- he would elbow me hard
- and call me “Jew”—
- so simple a phrase that it seemed
- we mutually understood
- a Jew to be so much less
- that it only needed pointing out.
- we mutually understood
- so simple a phrase that it seemed
- and call me “Jew”—
- he would elbow me hard
- when my coaches weren’t within earshot
- During our practices at the local elementary schools
- Everyone else seemed to know
- Those memories
- and my pity and guilt
- always take me further back
- to the Nazis
- to the hills of their freshly paved, ever-expanding autobahn
- rolling massive, unstoppable:
- cement tides at once imitating
- and defying
- nature.
- cement tides at once imitating
- rolling massive, unstoppable:
- to the hills of their freshly paved, ever-expanding autobahn
- to the Nazis
-
-
- I thought of that road
- as my tour bus huffed about the soft curves of the route
- from Krakow to Oswiecim
- and my guide
- a soft-spoken Scandinavian woman
- pointed out the factory
- to and from which the prisoners of nearby Auschwitz
- would march each day
- in wooden shoes
- until their infected soles bled:
- for to walk the road
- was to be unworthy of it.
- for to walk the road
- until their infected soles bled:
- in wooden shoes
- would march each day
- to and from which the prisoners of nearby Auschwitz
-
- The tiny towns seemed to fade
- into the rural grassland
- within seconds of my passing them.
- into the rural grassland
- I feared
- that the residents would still think themselves
- small enough to ignore
- the sudden presence
- of walls and fences
- of odious, polluting smells.
- the sudden presence
- small enough to ignore
- that the residents would still think themselves
- And I feared
- that the myths were true
- that the ashes of the Jews had been woven into the asphalt:
- those light, wispy particles
- still lying intact amongst the sedimentary layers
- or having been eroded into further imperceptibility
- by the natural occurrences of time.
- or having been eroded into further imperceptibility
- still lying intact amongst the sedimentary layers
- those light, wispy particles
- Now, cruising through rural Massachusetts towards the City,
- I dream of combing the rocks and pebbles
- of I-95
- for the remains of small creatures
- tossed aside towards the median
- or left to rot.
- Would I find collections of clotted blood
- and wisps of fur
- or would we, too, have found a way
- to make nothing
- of even those tiniest of pieces?
- to make nothing
- I dream of combing the rocks and pebbles
Zach is an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing at Northern Arizona University. He is an avid Celtics fan, a wannabe psychoanalyst, and a lover of all things garlicky. Some of his previous poems and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, CutBank, The Nervous Breakdown, Wordgathering, Breath & Shadow, Sh!t Men Say to Me: A Poetry Anthology, and other places. You can read more of his work at: https://zachsemel.wordpress.com/.
