Astronomers
Cycling
Graphology
How to Stay Awake
Museum of Septum
Shape Shift
The Condor
Walking Around: The Sixth Wave of Extinctions
What I Watched On My Summer Vacation
Words at War
How to Stay Awake
John Drury
Late at night on the interstate, driving
while drowsy, you crank
open the window so the wind starts shoving
with its cold fingers.
But even with coffee, the sedative is silence,
a calm that lingers
in the slow drone of tires on the highway,
like the hushed waves
against a hull that’s rocking on the bay.
In any car,
the wind, however loud, is still a murmur.
What’s a sure
way to keep yourself awake? Just click
the radio on
to something loud enough, not talk but rock,
and don’t just listen—
that’s how a siren lures you to slip under,
seductive assassin,
and merge into a gulf of harmonies.
You have to sing,
open your mouth wide, belt it out, and praise
the means you have
for rescuing your own self from yourself,
to stay alive
by keeping the muscles moving in your mouth,
so your eyes can’t close,
so the song becomes a counter-spell to death.
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while drowsy, you crank
open the window so the wind starts shoving
with its cold fingers.
But even with coffee, the sedative is silence,
a calm that lingers
in the slow drone of tires on the highway,
like the hushed waves
against a hull that’s rocking on the bay.
In any car,
the wind, however loud, is still a murmur.
What’s a sure
way to keep yourself awake? Just click
the radio on
to something loud enough, not talk but rock,
and don’t just listen—
that’s how a siren lures you to slip under,
seductive assassin,
and merge into a gulf of harmonies.
You have to sing,
open your mouth wide, belt it out, and praise
the means you have
for rescuing your own self from yourself,
to stay alive
by keeping the muscles moving in your mouth,
so your eyes can’t close,
so the song becomes a counter-spell to death.