James H Duncan

Food, Gas, Motel—Exit Now

weary tunnel-vision highway drive,

numb hands and aching lead foot, I see

the exit sign for home, followed by

the sweeping curve of the ramp onto

Route 9, and there it is, just past the Hess

Station and the Knights Motor Inn, that old

Burger King from decades past, right

across the street from Green Meadow

Elementary School, grades K-4, where

I spent formative years on the library

floor, in the music room, in an art smock,

climbing a rope in the cavernous gym,

where I won a giant green pumpkin for

winning a footrace in October, 1989

I pull into the Burger King lot, the place

where we always stopped during field trips,

usually afterward on the way home from

bread factories, Indian trails, museums,

stage plays and even an opera once, and

after waiting in line with great anticipation

I’d always get one of two things: whopper

with cheese (yes, even as a small boy)

with onion rings (never fries) and a brimming

sparkling ice-filled Dr. Pepper, maybe Coke,

maybe root beer, in that order, or failing

the whopper, the “oval”, that long chicken

sandwich in an oblong shape, and I’d pick

up my order and go sit with friends, or alone,

but always by the aquarium tank separating

the restaurant proper from the sitting atrium

and I’d watch the idle fish bump along

the glass wall and eat my food and think

about what I saw that day, enjoying the moment

before we’d all pile back onto the bus to

continue life and the little various hells waiting

for us out there beyond the atrium window

but they closed the Burger King and I sat

in the empty lot staring at the boarded up windows,

shaky from the long drive and hollowed out

from no food in seven or eight hours, and those

boarded up windows hurt in a way I hadn’t hurt

in a long time, like seeing the exit ramp for home

turned over to grass and disappeared, like seeing

your parents house demolished for scrap, nowhere

to go, nothing to do but get older, hungrier, sicker,

more scared, less willing to fight for what good

things might be at the next exit ramp, but not

all that weak just yet, still time left to pull out

of the lot, wait to turn left at the light, and find

that damn Taco Bell everyone used to like so much

then keep on up Route 9 for whatever little hells

waited beyond the string of lighted intersections

For more by James, visit www.jameshduncan.com.