October 2010
Chris Petruccelli
I-95
The lemons were gone as soon as Morristown. Down the coast your McIntosh hair braided, unwashed had a scent as if it had gone brown. Chests became pillows, bodies were blankets, everything for weeks was biological. Burbank Ave stuck to the fabric as a reminderof Connecticut rain.
I-65
Bowling Green smelled like your hometown—goldenrod and coal. Here you were a s tranger. Your knees bent like drinking straws and hard use wore your feet red with clay. A few days in the country reminded us of early American history, all cider and tobacco.
Route 63
The road foams at the sides of its mouth, frost rises early in the fall. Streets in Missouri begin teething as ice cuts coarse smiles into asphalt. Fields once green now lakes of hot mud.
US-25E
Through Cumberland Gap and at Bean Station, the White Oaks weren’t dying but going dormant. Hands at ten and two, you kept your distance in fear that sleep s pores were contagious. In Tennessee, the sound of 23 strings came straight from the hills. The highway wound the mountains like the whorls of fingers.
Chris Petruccelli is a geographer, who is obsessed with landscapes and the influences of place. “October 2010” is part of a travelogue he wrote while travelling the U.S. by car and Greyhound. Writing has always been a pastime for him, but it wasn’t until his first workshop class that he began to transform his writing from a hobby into a craft. He’s happy to say that this poem is from that workshop and is his first publication. He would like to give a special thanks to Dr. Erin Smith.