Postcards from Bob

Postcard #9: Ardmore, OK, Dec. 11, 1998

I toast you with NyQuil, my patient and distant benefactors, snail mail interlocutors,

What I notice at 4:00 A.M. through the Motel 6
window is the unkempt neon hair of the Goddess
of Sleeplessness. A pin-up cowgirl mascot.
Once this model courtyard Motor Inn was famous
for its in-house laundry and rattlesnake roundups.
Now as renovated home-away-from motor home it conjures
paint-by-number wagon-trains, dreams of back spun
lassos. I idle into this sheet cake icing dawn, an escape
artist who has tied himself in one too many knots.

From each according to his handicap to each according to his captivity.

Our Lady of Crème-filled Donuts consoles, cradling
an enormous coffee cup whose clouds are confused
as to how to teach Camouflage 101.

Signing Off,

Big-rig Drifter Bob

only two stations
Country or Western—
a highway-long back draft of mirage

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About the Author

Judson Evans is a full-time Professor of Liberal Arts at Berklee College of Music, where he teaches poetry workshops focusing on haiku, haibun, and renku, and a visual studies course on Paleolithic cave art. His collaborative book of lyric poems responding to cave painting, Chalk Song, was published by Lilly Press, Boston, in fall 2021. He is co-editor of haibun for Frogpond.