Failing at the Exit Ramp, Icarus Jones Speaks True

Ever missed throwing change in the toll

booth’s wide trough? The easiest bank shot

imaginable, and the light zinc, the phantom

silver, the miniscule nickel, which no wind

should be able to disturb, falling short, rolling

like five marbles stuck by a jawbreaker along

the exit ramp’s ramshackle yellow lines. Haste

is the haint today, in the paint—crooked

as an arthritic finger—in the circumlocution

coins sing on gravel, and the miracle

of an upright stance that gains inches

from the reach of your hand. How

on earth? raises its hand to speak

through a throb at your temple. Listen

whether laughter follows or calling the wind

anything but a child of God, the veil you’ve

sewn so carefully to claim control is torn

like any other scrim, gentle first and then

all at once. Clink and the light isn’t looking

to reflect, the coins gone after the dark under the car

or sunk into cracks they were meant to pay for. Here in

the rearview, a crow’s foot spinning out of the coin of my eye.