memorial

i wonder what dead people
think about having highways
named after themselves

do they nervously
watch over them?

cleaning 
up car accidents with
a dust pan & broom

it must be especially crowded
for those that are 
dedicated to veterans of 
big wars like vietnam
or korea

did their ghosts wake up
on the side of the road?

still in uniform--

are they hitchhikers now?

standing there with
their thumbs out hoping
a tractor trailer will
pick them up & drive them
to the cemetery up
the way 

some sit on the top of
billboards

legs dangling

i don't think i'd
like anything named after me
when i die

outside the library 
in kutztown there's a walkway
with people's names printed
on bricks

some of them are dead

when they were building it
i wanted my parents to buy 
me one 

there's something 
about having your name 
pressed into stone

oh the things we do
to not be wiped away

when they tear up
that walkway years from
now what will they do
with all the bricks?

will they circle up
in the grass & speak
each name aloud?

a kind of exorcism

i'm thinking about
the little memorial garden
outside of my high school 

the one we sometimes 
sat in after school

they built it for
these two kids who died 
the week after they graduated

one fell into 
a hay baler & the other's
heart stopped while he was
running on a beach--

they share the garden--

their names in stone
on opposite ends of 
the fenced in circle

i wonder what they think 
of it--

if they feel the sneakers
over cobble stone

if they feel when 
volunteers come to yank out
weeds from the flower bed--

do they sit in the gazebo 
& argue?

in the ground there's more 
bricks with names

dead teachers dead students

they've read them so
many times that the words
stop making sense

i hope they don't
ever write my name on
a brick

i don't want to linger like that

maybe a tree would be nice

there's a tree at my college

someone's family leaves
blue plastic flowers at the base
at the start of every new semester 

you can tell the person must
have died recently because
the tree is still so wispy

held up by wires

oh i hope one day it gets
big enough to break the nearby
pathways-- rip cement
tear power lines from the air

if perhaps you 
name a highway after me

you have to make sure you drive
it often 

when it's dark &
there's only headlights
to keep me company 

i hope you'll come find me

pullover with your four-ways on

i'll be in the tall grass
picking up empty soda cans 

will you leave flowers
in my throat?

not plastic ones 

we'll pull up the bricks
of this body 
one by one