Migration Myth
Some say it stops life splinters it
cordons it into sections or that life
travels atop—finding purchase elsewhere—
The memory is August. Asphalt and air waving the heat. He frames
a house beside it. Rubber melting into tracks. A coupe pulls up.
Someone is wrestled to the pavement—hot, smoking—a gun goes
off. Kneika’s husband is dead. His children will settle around
the road for the next century.
At one of the three corners of two bridge road, a car pulls in to
the mountainside mechanic. The road is bitten with potholes from
the salt. There is something wrong with the transmission. Barbara’s
husband will fix it for less than the dealer down the street. She
holds a shotgun to her side behind the register.
Norwood now reaches Lincoln Park. Dolores’s soon to be
husband steals cars. His buddy down in Newark strips them for
parts. They run this stunt for eight years.
It is forty-five minutes of pavement rolling. The interstate and then
local roads. Christi’s child is picked up by their father. This
drive defines his Sundays, when the roads are full from Bergen to
NY. Cars are deadlocked. Trying to escape the suburbs.
Catie Prospero McGuire is a senior English major at SUNY Geneseo with a concentration in creative writing and minors in history and ethics & values in society. She originally hails from New Jersey and her preferred genre is poetry.