Grant's Broiler
by Grant Cogswell

"When the viaduct comes down, the Seattle I grew up in will finally be completely gone."
- Charles D' Ambrosio

change and surprise, change and surprise;

there is the road of someone's body
you have loved night after night

and the road of lovelessness for years,
the ritual of rising alone

and this;

and of these roads the one
that strangers
drive together survives longest
that it should end is intolerable

the western seam unstrung its stanchions gray teeth, shifting with age,
irreplaceable, the stones
in motion, liquefying
earth held back with bandages

driving south, out of the tunnel
and into the moment
passing under the beams
bargaining, the breath held slightly

freedom to get off at Denny,
freedom to get off at Seneca
rising through the speakers shouting
WE WANT ALL EXITS

as a child shoves his pancakes aside
he growls for the Cat that smoothes the berm;
his playing made us it,
the promise of this vista from the rail:

the heart of the city all at once;

this is what we bought with the wars,
with Yankee ingenuity;

alongside in the gritty wind
or underneath, in the rain dripping
cathedral of its vast nave, find it
blessedly unvirtual:

we risk becoming too good
for this underlying truth, the work
done now mostly with machines,
filth, yes, the piss and the rain
coming in,
the benediction of wind from the sea

without this nothing is beautiful

in this corner where our paths all cross
repeating to ourselves in the quiet
I am an American: I drive

Custom Search