“Just a bad day” and “A road blessing for my granddaughter’s (probably ex) boyfriend”

By Casey Killingsworth

Just a bad day

So–

You’re on your way to your daughter’s
fresh from the phone call that she and her
husband might be calling it quits,
but you’re still sitting there thinking

about why laundromats lose socks and
how your car looks like shit with that
missing hubcap.

You want to tell her that wheels fall off,
All wheels eventually fall off, either today
or on some future road, but instead you
wonder why does this highway seem

so much darker in the rain and why,
at some point, does every dark road
end up a poem, every word
gripping you to the pavement,

the last-chance glue holding you to the
universe after a long, long night of
talking it all out.

A road blessing for my granddaughter’s (probably ex) boyfriend

This is a road blessing for my granddaughter’s boyfriend whose name
I can’t remember and they probably broke up already, on his way home

tonight, with maybe a stanza for his tires to keep calm and another for
the dark nights to let him through until he’s old and has seen so many

cloudless vistas traveled along this river they’re etched, maybe a chorus
to charm the road itself, to persuade it to whisper him guidance even

years after there are too many college classes and jobs and kids pushing
them out of touch, even after they stop with the Christmas cards,

stop looking at each other’s spouses online, so long after
the moon has lighted up the road by the river tonight

that we can’t remember what it looked like.

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Casey has been published in numerous journals including The American Journal of Poetry, Better Than Starbucks, The Moth, and 3rd Wednesday. His latest book is A nest blew down (Kelsay Books, 2021), and a new collection, Freak show (Fernwood Press), is due out in 2024.