“Roads”: Poems March 2025

1. Editorial: Suranjana Choudhury
2. Route 322—Michele Mekel
3. The Road I Must Take—Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
4. Salvaging—Suzette Bishop
5. Leavings—Janet McMillan Rives
6. Everything Roadtrip—Ricky Santer
7. Signposts—Sharon Hilberer
8. Reading—Owais Farooq
9. Unfinished Highway—Himanshu Kumar
10. The Road Becomes Me—Sreejata Roy
11. The road that my mother saw and that led to her—Reenu Talwar
12. Walking Your Path—Abby Kesington
13. Road Bonding—Mandakini Bhattacherya
14. Deercorpsing—Daniel Gooding
15. The Importance of Elsewhere—Sharon Johnson
16. The Exodus—Samreen Sajeda
17. Stilts—Frank William Finney
18. Cracks in the Road—Eleanor Jones
19. Driving In—Rebecca Clifford
20. Police Point—Nikita Celine Dawn Synrem
21. Youth on a Road—Allan Lake
22. Cactus—John Grey
23. A Taxi—DS Maolalai

Editorial: Suranjana Choudhury

Welcome to Spring, Dear Readers.

  Is it the beginning or the end of a road that we pursue? Like complex algebraic equations, roads – the real and the imagined, oftentimes confuse us. In our ways, we try to gather meanings from the many roads we tread. In the long run, whatever we have gathered makes up our archives, individual and collective.  As one can see, the history and geography of a road can tell us so much about a people, their past and present. It can hold so much and yet can release so remarkably. In a different context, Ben Okri in The Famished Road notes how “the river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world.” The whole world is no small place. That any road administers life’s valuable lessons is no lie, its pedagogy forever defeating the limits of any established syllabus.

Very often in my dreams, I’m able to hear the silence and sounds of roads I have never trodden before. These roads without any specific addresses bear the potency of irrepressible truths. Whatever motion and rest a road conceives, in the course, it gives memorable things to us as Santa does – joy, wonder, excitement, love, and at times troubles, hurdles, and difficulties. A road weighed down by a milling crowd, an empty lane, or a spooky path makes us aware of our itinerant selves, our compulsive devotion to the idea of floating free. Life leads us to many unexplored journeys which prompt us to revise our understanding of fixed routes. Because of how roads are positioned, they are always outside of any promise of permanence. This note of impermanence renders its proximity to life itself.

We were curious to find out what this issue would finally look like. All the pieces that make it to this edition expand our perception of how we look at a road and how it can lead us to a destination which as Gloria Steiner notes, is “both surprising and inevitable – like the road itself.”

Thank you for being with us!

Route 322—Michele Mekel

Fencerows, riverbanks, leeward slopes

line rural highway,

winding through Upper Appalachia.

But there’s a stretch

where the road spreads sloppily,

runs flat.

There, poles—

of treated wood,

supporting power lines

along mountain ridges;

of stainless steel,

supporting nearly nude women

inside squat, windowless buildings.

But so, too—

of concrete,

supporting a shrunken simulacrum

of Staten Island’s Lady,

cast from white plaster.

Liberty—

writ small,

out of place

amid rushing waters,

strip club billboards

—intent on dragging

her, her sisters

into the undertow.

Yet, she stares

firmly ahead,

lifting her lamp.

The Road I Must Take—Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

I have wandered in search of my life,

now, this is the road that I must take.

it’d be long enough to carry the rivers

that quietly irrigate the green flowers

and the clear seas that feed the fish;

it’s wide enough to carry the mountains,

hiding the leopards from the rattlesnakes;

it’s brave enough for my shadow’s height

that they cover the length of the frozen fields.

There’s a forest at the end of the road,

where leaves live when no longer in death;

there is a river in the middle of the road,

where dreams swirl like fishes in a glass.

When rain falls, there is no shelter for me,

when the sun rises, there is no shade for me.

the thorns on the ground offer me no comfort,

and no peace will the hummingbirds provide.

I can see the moon clearing the dusty road

or the stars planting roses in the rocks;

the trees stand like loved ones at arrival terminals,

after flights landed late for many days.

But when I step out, I shall not step back,

I shall follow the road to reach my destination.

When I arrive, my glory will return,

to set my mind at rest, to set the scene straight,

or take away the doubt lingering at my back

like the body of an oak sprawling across a river.

It is the only road that I must take

though it leads me through blazing fires

and I learn to live my life like no other,

it’s wide enough to carry the river

where I wash my body at the end of my journey.

Salvaging—Suzette Bishop

We never get time together, just the two of us!

I yell, turning away, tears welling up.

A few days later, my dad and I settle

Into the car for a long, cold trip.

I hesitate to fold into the passenger seat

My step-mother usually commands beside him.

His silence, straight-line lips, tell me they argued hard,

And he’ll have hell to pay when we get back.

A few houses under snow edge along the horizon.

Lost, I don’t know these back country roads,

Winding, forking licorice against a new snowfall.

I’ve never been cross-country skiing before

And wonder what we’ll see on the trails

Beneath a snow-canopy of leafless trees.

We reach the ski lodge, an old farm house

Struck by fire, crow wings enfolding the roof.

A father and son store furniture in the barn.

They take my dad’s outstretched hand

In their soot-covered hands

And point to the house,

The house was in flames last night.

Sorry, we’re closing for the season.

The radar detector clipped to the dashboard,

We speed back for silent hours,

Tree shadows slide across the frozen fields,

Our silhouettes carry each day into a barn.

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