Emma McCoy

In Michigan, the plows scrape snow
off the roads and sow them with sand
and salt and gravel. Like stones that are
displaced in the furrowing, the white
and yellow highway lines are scraped
up in the process. Plows as pancake flippers
in the bottom of a pan.

It’s night and raining and the whole road
is a dark pan. Abigail reads Luci Shaw poems
by phone-light, out loud, lingering over
the lines: I made of grief a leaden bowl /
and drank it every drop. We sigh at the metaphors:
quick as scissors. Mud-brown heart. Bones
I haven’t met.

I don’t tell Abigail I can’t see the lane lines
and the water is spinning faster than the tires.
I narrowly avoid an exit sign green as mud.
Highway lanes dull as scissors rusting, vanishing
like stolen bones into the sheet-like downpour night.

“Read me another,” I say. The phone flashes
as she turns the page, reflected in the windshield,
tires spinning on gravel and salt.

Emma McCoy is the Associate Editor for Last Syllable and on staff at Whale Road Review and Minison Project. She has two poetry books: This Voice Has an Echo (2024) and In Case I Live Forever (2022), and a nomination for Best of the Net 2023. She’s been published in places like Stirring Literary, Cosmic Daffodil, and Thimble Mag. She’s probably reading right now. Catch her on Twitter: @poetrybyemma