DANE HAMANN 

Highway

The roar of the highway is not unlike

a nest of bees fed to me. Electric

in the way my hands numb into humming

shards. Filling in the way that loneliness

sometimes runs like a ribbon of asphalt,

a thousand miles of an unwrapped shadow.

Inside us there are deep, unclaimed spaces

only accessible along the wild

shoulders of roads. I’ll unwrap like a field

of wheat from a rock. That’s stopwatch logic.

Or maybe that’s equilibrium. No

one thing greater than another out here:

the wind puts its fists to my lungs and I

cut through it like a saw into cedar.

Dane Hamann works as an editor for a textbook publisher in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, after which he served as the poetry editor of TriQuarterly for over five years. His chapbook Q&A was published by Sutra Press. He can be found at www.danehamann.com and on Twitter @donnyhamms.