The girl inside you has branches for arms—tiny, blood-colored leaves hanging from them—straw for a stomach, a scarecrow giving birth to deer and ghosts. You don’t care that the flashes of light against the window when you’re driving on the highway look like dating sites, remind you of her, so many bored and disinterested people, so many lonely sex acts. In the back of your girlfriend’s van a small statue of Jesus rolls his eyes. He doesn’t care. He looks up at the orange lights of a city that is almost as shitty as the city you’re from. On the highway, the cop car lights in the distance look like fireworks, like men burning their least favorite words. The statue coughs in the back and no one hears it. The radio plays the same thing for hours. It is some kind of blessing, some kind of burning. You hope it travels far.
Radio Transitions: Interior
Corey Zeller is the author of Man vs. Sky (YesYes Books, 2013) and You and Other Pieces (Civil Coping Mechanisms, forthcoming). His work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Mid-American Review, Indiana Review, The Colorado Review, The Kenyon Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Diagram, Salt Hill, West Branch, Third Coast, The Paris-American, The Rumpus, and PEN America, among others. He currently works in crisis support at a facility for children and adolescents with mental and behavioral issues.