Tom Barlow
Tom Barlow is an Ohio writer of poetry, short stories and novels. His work has appeared in journals including Trampoline, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, Redivider, The North Dakota Quarterly, The New York Quarterly, The Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many more. See more at tombarlowauthor.com.
I-71 | 8:00 a.m. | 74 MPH
Cocksure, I start to change lanes
forgetting the blind spot where sits
forgetting the blind spot where sits
a black Nissan Rogue | it appears
suddenly, like a hair fallen into my eye |
She swerves left, I swerve right |
if I claim a miracle it is this |
no other cars around us | no collision |
no angry horn | no pistol in her
holster with which to amplify
our intimacy | all along that road
from Columbus to Cincinnati
deer bodies like bags of mulch
spilled onto the berm | and if I assert
a miracle it is this | so many deer
remain alive | if the multiverse
is real then we are already dead
in so many of them | so if I am
to declare a miracle | it is the years
and the universes and the deer
and all the people who hold me close |
that we are all alive in this time
in this chancy version of the world
where there is still so much
highway to come.
