More or Less
The inhabitants of the bus more or less cared
about destination: that it was coming,
that it loomed, and even, in some cases,
that it should arrive as quickly as possible.
On certain nights, more or less,
the driver could see lights smearing
up the horizon like exaggerated, tragic mascara.
He wondered who in the world would have painted
such a scene, the landscape faceless, eyeless—
Suppose a woman lived there, in the spaces
between light and silhouette. A whole sky,
more or less, of women, small as you could paint them,
alone or lonely or just shadow,
and the marvelous mockery of the road,
winding by and away from them.
Would you, too, find me there?
The invitation said plus one,
which subtracts the more or less obvious.
Situation multiplied, you’d be carrying one
to the bathroom after a long night of drink.
The equation simple, and divisive.
Something unspoken to the power
of something stated. What a rotten formula.
As for me, I’m more the Queen
of such lesser country,
veil caught in the wheel well. I decree, world:
bury me in this dress, in the first-song
fields, in the summer,
when the wheat falls in love with wind.
*
July Westhale is a Fulbright-nominated poet, activist, and journalist. She has been awarded residencies from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Sewanee, Napa Valley, Tin House and Bread Loaf. Her poetry has most recently been published in Adrienne, burntdistrict, Eleven Eleven, WordRiot, 580 Split, Quarterly West, and PRISM International. She is the 2014 Tomales Bay Poetry Fellow.