To Hope Street
____________________________________

Where I grew, roads named for their distance
from the river: 6 mile, 7 mile, 8 mile—
and the solemnity of numbers showed
resistance to artifice. Where I live

are neighborhoods of streets named for precious
gems—ruby, sapphire, pearl—and flowers—
poppy, camellia, lilac—displays plush enough
to harbor a felon, should the getaway car

expire. Here, even stucco buds—
tax dollars at play. Usually, it seems like Hope
wends places deloused of such luxury,
the drag from East Origin to West Destiny,

towns with city councils that meet in holy
donut shops. Here, west means you’re going
toward the ocean and east means away, go back
from whence you came. I cannot go back

and neither can you. It does not exist—
those bustling Main Streets rusted over,
forlorn chassis in the Midwestern winter,
dead-ending into a field reclaimed by attitudes

of grass alongside a highway that pulled
a number so great it would surely be conscripted.
The dead and dying parade their nostalgia
down it wearing floats, risen above the fashioned

facts of memory. The street develops amnesia,
forgets its faults, dreams of asphalt patch.
Does lane aspire to avenue? Circle to thoroughfare?
I cannot help thinking that the street named Hope

has something to offer. Something prophetic?
Something narcotic? I cannot help
thinking, though I can’t say it’s time well-spent.
Ignominious hope, pedestrian hope,

a street is defined by its bounds: two sides
to every story. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter:”
the billboard outside Hell, according to the man
who layered Hell like a taco salad. If it will

make you feel better, you can cry
on the shoulder of the road.

 

From Hilarity by Patty Seyburn, 2009

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
| Home | Book Index |