Road Construction

A woman has commandeered all the traffic cones. No one knows where to drive, how to maneuver through holes where the intersection used to be. She keeps them in the basement and in her attic, stares at the reflective strips lining her bookshelves, until she memorizes the hazards. She wants a new rocking chair. Less celebration than so much rubber or plastic, she calls out to the horns: I am all for the music, and turns her arms into cradles.

 
 
 
 

Callista Buchen is the author of the chapbooks The Bloody Planet (Black Lawrence Press, October 2015) and Double-Mouthed (winter 2016, dancing girl press). Her work appears in Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Fourteen Hills, and many other journals, and she is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award and DIAGRAM's essay contest.