Interloper
Gail Haruko Yamauchi
Speed
across the state line one night when the moon has chased
away the stars.
The
road narrows, yellow lines disappear.
Red
watertight barns give way to grey weathered ones that could tell you stories.
Trim
white fences of
to
sparse, loose lines of barbed wire in Franklin County, Indiana.
Ride
free and smell the sweet green air.
See
no one for forty, fifty minutes, then a blast of pickup-truck high-beams.
In
the dark no one can see the color of your skin, the shape of your eyes.
Only
the moon watches a car as it speeds down long roads cut straight
as
if by the hand of God and His divine T-square, or hugs sharp curves
unmarked by any sign
because if you're out here at night
you best know where you're going.
No
one comes out here from
Just
me
hoping the car doesn't break down in Brookville
where people say the last Black family got chased out, years ago
by
the same Klan that marched through my town in 1991.
Still. No one's ever said boo to me here, never told
me to go back
where I came from
not meaning
never pulled their eyes into slits and said ching-chong-chopsuey.
Keep
driving and no one will have the chance.
The night sky reaches
from the far island of trees over the sea of corn and soy to the next island
of
brave branches and leaves that hold back the wind,
black combs against the softer black of the sky.
Darkest
Speed
across the state line late on a moonless starry night.
Turn
off the headlights and drive into grey monochrome
seeing with the rods of your eyeballs.
Pull
the car off the shoulder
lie on the hot trunk and try to find black space between the diamond
pinpricks.
Stare
long enough and you always find a new star
where you thought there was nothing.
Darkest
and a mouthful of dirt can taste so sweet.
Gail Haruko Yamauchi grew up in Southwestern Ohio four miles from the
Fellowship in Non-fiction
Literature and an MFA from the New School
program in creative writing.
"Interloper" is her first published
poem.