Typewriter Rodeo: Traffic – The Return!

Each week, the Standard reaches out to Austin’s Typewriter Rodeo for a custom poem on Texas topics.

By David FruchterMay 28, 2021 12:43 pm, ,

As pandemic restrictions lesson and many feel safer traveling and gathering at homes, schools, and workplaces we’re also seeing the return of something familiar: traffic. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.

Traffic – The Return!

do you remember?
do you remember, my fellow humans?

how you would emerge from sheltered home
blinking at the light
looking left and right
and seeing no one?

how you would drive down the street
the highway, the thoroughfare
nervous to see
even the very few other vehicles
on the road
like bumper cars
in a haunted theme park?

the whole world, a ghost town

well now
the ghosts
are coming back

avenues filling with bodies, with cars
many even showing their faces

their faces!

i don’t think i’ve felt such
terror
such exhilaration
such sheer….annoyance

since the last time i rode this ride
back before the park shut down

and sent us all

home

photo of typewritten poem on a small, yellow sheet of paper

typewriter rodeo logo

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