Gauntlet
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Gauntlet*
A flatbed of crushed car chassis, scrap piledfour or five high holds up two lanes of traffic;the load has shifted and curves out overthe right lane under a metal rock-outcropping.
The roadway tier has a street just belowthe right guardrail, no one below whichis paying the avalanche in positionany attention: is why the truck can't change lanes.
Cars in both lanes behind the truck hang backfrom the crushed which threaten to crush uswithin the tube of this surf of our waste,to wipe us out. You'd think no one'd dare try this gauntlet.
But in the city of the quick New Yorkminute, you see the cars on their mark get set [End Page 775]
Besides, I had Kamau in the passenger seat,which meant I might as well a had Damballahin my hands, brilliant ouroberus, the moveless wheel.
In his Bajan, some proverb of patiencesettles the situation into a wait without waitingto get anywhere other than here already there.
That's his old Wordsworth chassis piled into Sycoraxrocking in that boat up ahead, headed for art fromruin, the chain broken threatening the load upon
arrivant runaway, every step he take escape, every wordbreak a getaway with new maroon meaning proud,so we had plenty music to wait with.
Braithwaite talk about the bullet in his headand how by only those chances we are here. [End Page 776]
Ed Roberson is Distinguished Artist in Residence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is author of eight books of poetry: The New Wing of the Labyrinth (Singing Horse Press, 2009), City Eclogue (Atelos, 2006), Atmosphere Conditions (Sun & Moon Press, 2000; winner of the 2000 National Poetry Award), Just In / Word of Navigational Challenges: New and Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1998), Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (University of Iowa Press, 1995; winner of the 1994 Iowa Poetry Prize), Lucid Interval as Integral Music (University of Iowa Press, 1995; winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize), Etai-Eken (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975), and When Thy King Is a Boy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970). In 2008, he received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Footnotes
* For Kamau Braithwaite. This is a revised version of the poem "Gauntlet" that will be published in Ed Roberson's forthcoming volume of poetry, To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2010). Printed with permission from Wesleyan University Press.
