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2023 Issue 5 Sept/Oct Focus - Mid-South Magazine

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His name is Rick. And he’s been everywhere. From his<br />

home in California to Montana to NYC to New Orleans<br />

to this stop right here to ask me if I could watch his bag<br />

for him. We have become fast friends, popping each<br />

other’s backs and watching those backs in turn. This is<br />

the communion of the road, I soon realize. You have to<br />

trust people.<br />

Where his final destination was or would be, I do not<br />

know. He departs my life in Salt Lake City, refusing all of<br />

my gifts, all of my offerings. He knows the ways of the<br />

road better than I ever could. So I ordain him a saint of the<br />

streets in my heart.<br />

I might be painting a desolate picture, but I don’t mean<br />

to. There’s beauty on the road as well. A great example<br />

comes from my poem Colorado Dawn.<br />

“A picturesque pastoral of / muted grey and soft blue<br />

rekindles / when a daffodil paintbrush lifts up / the veil<br />

of night. A frontier fire blazes up again, / where cattle<br />

and horses lazily graze (...) / I open my canteen and<br />

swallow / cold clear water from a river running freely /<br />

about a mile past the horizon. (...) Outside, a few cattle<br />

moan like whales do at breach.”<br />

There are many more moments like this during my<br />

travels, where the road takes on this ethereal quality.<br />

Moments where you can’t see anything but the world’s real<br />

beauty. It makes trips like these worth it, by car or by bus.<br />

Another wonderful moment comes after my Portland<br />

stay. I hop onto my bus to Montana and meet a lady named<br />

Pixie. She’s an ex-Mormon lesbian with doll-red hair, and, I<br />

later found out, she had been confirmed in her former faith<br />

the same day I was born. Throughout the night we talk<br />

and smoke weed at every bus stop with watchful eyes. The<br />

drivers and depot authorities will find any excuse to kick<br />

you off the trail. Especially if what you’re doing is on the<br />

edge of legality.<br />

One such instance happens during the Olympia station<br />

stop. Two elderly travelers try sneaking a garbage bag full<br />

of PBR into the underside of the bus. Of course, the bag<br />

rips open and beer spills out everywhere. Both culprits<br />

blame each other but the cops don’t care. They both get<br />

escorted off the property.<br />

In Spokane, where Pixie lives, we say our goodbyes. She<br />

leaves me with the rest of her weed and a lovely kiss on<br />

the cheek. My next destination will be back to the halls of<br />

memory, back in Missoula.<br />

Missoula is shaped like a bowl, because it used to be<br />

a glacier.<br />

The winding passes where the Clark-Fork rushes<br />

through, whipping cold wind like a cat-o’-nine-tails to the<br />

face. In fact, I describe Montana perfectly in my poem<br />

Passing into Montana, where I say:<br />

“canyons, with their / creek cut bottoms; / pines hiking<br />

uphill; / snow; / train tracks; / river’s run; / snow; / icy<br />

roads;/ ice flows; / deer grazing; / eagles hunting; /<br />

snow; and / snow; and / snow.”<br />

When the bus drops me off at the depot, I’m facing that<br />

wind, marching towards my friend’s place where I’ll be<br />

staying. You can save money when you travel by having<br />

people you know at each stop. That, or budget for a hotel.<br />

Firstly, I go back to the college and visit all my old stops.<br />

It’s all stayed the same: bleary-eyed students working on<br />

assignments; teachers sipping their morning coffee. After<br />

a short nostalgia trip, I go back downtown, get a burrito<br />

from Taco Sano, and bother the baristas at Butterfly,<br />

just like old times. In that coffee shop, I write down in my<br />

poem Missoula, that:<br />

“Nothing’s changed really. / The ghosts still haunt<br />

where they haunt / and I stick to the same old routes. I<br />

stay / on the paths I know and have known.”<br />

There’s nothing bad about that. Sometimes, an oasis<br />

is all you need on a long journey. After a few days and<br />

an assorted adventure that I further detail in the poem I<br />

quoted, I got back on the bus to head back home.<br />

My next destination: the Mississippi River, on my way<br />

home again. On the trip to the mouth of that great river,<br />

I nap. A man from Nigeria had given me his pillow to rest<br />

my head on. I want to thank him, but he departs while I<br />

sleep. The trip back home is just as eventful as the trip out<br />

West but without much beauty. It has the equivalence of a<br />

comedown or a hangover. The party’s over, so all I have left<br />

are storms and cornfields.<br />

Still, I scribble down poems about this side of the<br />

country. In The Woods Grow Dark and Deep, after the<br />

Iowa cornfields,<br />

“we find ourselves in a stalemate / the sky outside<br />

opening [up] for a storm. / The drone of wind and lowhanging<br />

/ fruit of one-paycheck-away patrons / seems<br />

to me the perfect mix / for tornado warnings / and<br />

hurricane dreams.”<br />

Well, just before we reach Little Rock, that exact<br />

storm descends.<br />

Tornados, two of them, make us crest to the roadside<br />

and wait. It reminds me of Job getting yelled at by God,<br />

which I use in, Coming Home Again. I write how, if there is a<br />

God, then He made all of this,<br />

“the sun and moon / the stars and sky / the earth<br />

and sea / the tragedies / the comedies / the singing<br />

homeless / the bastardizing rich / the hopeless and<br />

callous / the young and dumb / the old and worse!”<br />

While we sit here, a man starts wandering up and<br />

down the bus, yelling about how he’s been stabbed. This<br />

man must be our modern Job himself. But no one cares.<br />

Because at the moment, I think all of us felt like Job.<br />

All I know is I’m glad that home is a short three hours<br />

away.<br />

There’s this surreality you can only experience when you<br />

take a long trip like this. Plus, a strange camaraderie exists<br />

on this long road. People like Pixie and Rick are maybe<br />

some of the kindest people I have ever met.<br />

Would I do this again? Possibly a shorter trip. Maybe to<br />

the East Coast.<br />

Do I regret the trip? Not at all. I’m glad I got to see<br />

America right.<br />

14 Go! | <strong>Sept</strong>+<strong>Oct</strong> <strong>2023</strong> | focuslgbt.com

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