This is as alone as it gets,
driving the highway, just one
in a scatter of cars.
When all the voices on the radio
have risen and vapored away,
when this road is just another way
 of getting somewhere.
 
I pass by exit ramps that lead
to Wal-marts and drive-thru chicken stands.
I watch emptiness filling everything.
 
I see cars in the opposite lane,
and I want to shout go back!
  I’ve been that way
and you won’t find diners
with waitresses name Daisy
 
who wipe disappointment into their aprons.
You won’t find men on motorcycles brawling
in roadside joints where tables splinter
like expectation.
 
Just a lot of dresses on steel racks,
the choice of white meat or dark,
and trucks with huge, square fronts
pushing the future
just inches out of reach.
 

Francine Witte: is a poet, playwright and fiction writer living in New York City. Her flash fiction has appeared in Doorknobs and BodyPaint, in posse review, slow trains literary journals as well as numerous print journals. Her flash fiction chapbook, The Wind Twirls Everything was published by MuscleHead Press, a division of Boneworld Publishing in Russell, NY. Her poetry chapbook, The Magic in the Streets was published by Owl Creek Press as first prize winner of their chapbook contest. She has received three Pushcart Prize nominations. She is a graduate of the University of Vermont, SUNY Binghamton and Vermont College. She teaches English at Norman Thomas High School in mid-town Manhattan. Please visit her website -- frangirl.com.

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