Ben Groner III

If My Physical Ailments Took a Road Trip

The alfalfa along Black Pine Road
is getting patchy, as are my eyebrows,
idiopathic ulerythema ophryogenes
uprooting those minuscule stalks
from sunburnt land. While we’re at it,
let’s not forget to properly position
the lumbar cushion for that most sinuous
of coastline curves, scoliosis that always
has my back. White lines stutter
on the blacktop, but it will relieve you
to know my right eye hasn’t wandered
since childhood surgery, though I’ve
retained the tendency to meander down
blue highways, open to a rustic barn,
a timorous pond. Epilepsy is the real kicker
here. Derecho that can knock out power—
though only for a few minutes—violet heat
lightning that can transpire in an hour,
a week, five years, never. I’ll skip
the electrocution, please, but keep the rain—
the reservoirs are running low. Grogginess
follows like fog scarfing Douglas firs
at daybreak. But there are problems more
pressing than one person’s rather minor
maladies. The aforementioned drought, yes,
screwing the ice caps on tight, keeping
rage and rifles on separate riverbanks.
A colleague once told me I have eight
seconds to hold someone’s attention
before it wanders. If so, I’ll gladly release
you, kind stranger, to your own concerns.
But won’t you look once more? Cliff
vertebrae dynamite into the sea, blighted
pine needles pelt their own sheltering bark.

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Ben Groner III (Nashville, TN), recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination and Texas A&M University’s 2014 Gordone Award for undergraduate poetry, has work published in Rust + Moth, GASHER, Cheat River Review, Whale Road Review, Stirring and elsewhere. He’s also a former bookseller at Parnassus Books. You can see more of his work at bengroner.com/creative-writing/