Route 3 by James B. Nicola

In photos shot from satellites in space
the autos seep as spillage on the road, so many going nowhere in a race,
and everyone a no-one in a crowd.

Construction, paid-for mess, alleviates:
but floodgates only stall the coming flood until metallic seas burst through the gates,
the highway’s gray veins clot with quickened blood.

Above it all, new silver towers rise
which from this angle look like a vandal had come and, where the forests and the skies
were dappled by The Painter, slashed them all.

The tower's power phones with which we might
download such photos from a satellite.

James B. Nicola’s poems have appeared in the Antioch, Southwest and Atlanta Reviews; Rattle; and Barrow Street. His seven full-length collections (2014-22) are Manhattan Plaza, Stage to Page, Wind in the Cave, Out of Nothing, Quickening, Fires of Heaven, and Turns & Twists (just out). His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. His poetry has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice award, one Best of Net nomination, one Rhysling nomination, and eight Pushcart noms—for which he feels both stunned and grateful. A graduate of Yale, he hosts the Hell's Kitchen International Writers' Round Table at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins welcome.