The Bedside Book of Interstate

by Glen Armstrong

Matt H. Wade

We continue to walk, watching out for traffic.

Our father lives near  the interstate.

My half-sister tries to convince me 

that love is just a response  

to the tribe tearing itself

apart.

Love is another body.

Love interrupts 

the urge to kill.

“Then the boardwalk at Coney Island,”

I wonder aloud, 

“is just the tribe

trying to reinvent the wild,

a place of constant shock

that sharpens us to threat . . .”

We talk until we run

out of neighborhood.

As kids we thought of our father

as a vacation

no one wanted to take.

As kids we thought of each other,

when we thought   

of each other at all,

as simultaneously

existing and not.

*

Glen Armstrong edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch) In Stone, and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press). His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and Cream City Review.