by George Bishop
It could be a drunk, a cop, someone
so familiar with exits they don’t need
a sign, they just take one. It could even be
me behind the headlights, going home
alone to be alone where other headlights
are coming at me all the way to sleep
and beyond. There’s a tug, darkness—
the black pines box me between stars
and asphalt. Trust’s heartless half
has passed, the part I never trusted
and always will. It’s turning around.
It always does. I can feel it—the heat
hidden deep in the eyes of its brake lights,
skid marks measuring my uncertainty,
knowing a part of me always refuses to
pull over on nights like these—almost
somewhere, identification all hit and run,
a little truth in the eyes of every alias.
George Bishop’s work has appeared in Carolina Quarterly and New Plains Review. Forthcoming work will be featured in Split Rock Review. Toadlilly Press will include his latest chapbook, Short Lives & Solitudes in November 2014. Bishop won the 2013 Peter Meinke Prize at YellowJacket Press for his sixth chapbook Following Myself Home. He attended Rutgers University and lives and writes in Saint Cloud, Florida.
