Poetry by Ross White

BOREDOM : LONG DRIVE TO NOWHERE

“Everything is boredom. Beauty especially.” —Gabrielle Bates

How you climbed my shoulders, boredom,

how you mounted me, saddled me,

spun me like a trick pony. I might have thought

you beautiful but you—chipped tooth, cracked vase,

pot never boiled over—were unwilling to yield to beauty.

Honda Accord up the rural highway. Honda Accord

skirting the dangerous mountain curve.

Each bridge I crossed I wished would collapse.

I wanted catastrophe. But you were the only end

possible for a mild boy like me. Couldn’t punch.

Wouldn’t bite. In exile until bedtime, driving.

You bent me like a spine. You dragged me like cans

behind the Just Married Cadillac. Empty flowerpot,

clothesline where the shirts won’t dry.

You made me wonder if I’d survive you, apathy:

of course I did. No one dies of lawns well-kept

or hornets who never leave the nest. Of no salt

on the table. Of clouds that look not like bears

or bunnies or lake monsters—of clouds that look

only like clouds. The road still stretches out before me.

---

Ross White is the author of Charm Offensive, winner of the 2019 Sexton Prize, and three chapbooks. He is the director of Bull City Press and co-host of The Chapbook. He teaches creative writing and grammar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.