Seeking the Interstate
Although I lived in a third floor
apartment, the trucks idling across
the street at the 24-hour donut
shop shifted my sleep into neutral.
Sleep was left stranded on a seldom
used road when the city began
jackhammering the street one night
at 11:00 p.m. The downstairs neighbor
pounding on her ceiling with a broom
when I rolled over in my makeshift bed
of camping pads sent sleep off
onto rumble strips. My sleep
in other towns and cities had its tires
punctured, its check engine light on,
when the neighbors’ dogs chained
outside barked through the night.
It took half a dozen more moves
before sleep, nightly, took the ramp
onto the interstate, the cruise control set,
the nearest town seven hours away.
My Mother, Laughing
Most comfortable at home
in the evening, when my father
sat beside her on the couch,
after they shared the dinner dishes,
my mother washing and my father drying
as they talked, my mother, who survived
cancer and multiple surgeries, had
a look of surprise when she laughed
and started farting. Hearing herself,
she laughed that much harder,
despite my father repeating the word
“Steady,” as if a helmsman struggled
to maintain control of the wheel.
That’s how I remember my mother.
James P. Cooper has had poems appear in Apple Valley Review, Evening Street Review, I-70 Review, Red Rock Review, Slant, and other journals. His chapbook, Listening for Low Tide, was awarded an honorable mention in the chapbook category of the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Awards. He is a poetry editor for Choeofpleirn Press, teaches writing online, and lives in Leavenworth, Kansas with his wife
