The Road Beneath Our Feet

Virginia – 1990

Jesus IS Lord

I. Jesus IS Lord” on this concrete wall,
Crystal City underpass. Emphatic
IS sprayed in all caps, a gentler
snaking white cursive for the name,
and title bestowed under duress
it suggests. Though when I first
Saw it, that smoke-stain
Striping up the wall
Made Lord read
Dead—behold
How this scar-mark
Bloomed from burning tires,
Some now-anonymous crash
Still blackens the faithful’s
Scrawl ambiguous.

—Kevin Gordon

Sinners….Beware

II. Figure of a man curiously
Mustached, on his heels
And off-kilter falling. Mandalic
Lines spread from the solar plexus,
One dot, right there. Only
One of a line angling up,
Four to the left of him, five
Right. So, shots fired, a spray?
Beneath his left arm
The long-handled axe,
One flame-shaped drop
Below the blade. Blood?
On the right, an equation
In quotation marks,
(image of a) mushroom cloud= HELL.
So much cosmic shorthand,
Word for mythic world
Where moral fires
Crackle and hiss in a regretful
Big Forever, down there.
“This is true” the writer declares
Below a cross
In flames, and the singular
Command: PRAY!
How the portentous
Always peers down
At the fallen still above ground
Who’ve paused to scan
The message,
A mere glance
Across opposing traffic,
Shifting from 2nd to 3rd,
To try and make the light.

—Kevin Gordon

Kevin Gordon

Kevin Gordon is a singer-songwriter based in Nashville; he holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly and Southern Poetry Review; Keith Richards, Levon Helm, Irma Thomas, and many others have recorded his songs. The title track from his album, "Down to the Well," a duet with Lucinda Williams”, appeared on Oxford American's annual Southern Music Sampler CD. His latest release, from 2018, is "Tilt & Shine."