If someone was kind enough to take us driving out to the long roads
that veered away from cornfields to the farms, pig roasts & parties
that lasted until dawn, where on occasion we found ourselves
in bed with someone we hardly knew & awoke laughing to escape
the shame & thrill of it, then for that time there was a brief sojourn
from the asylum in which the poem was held prisoner, asylum for which
there was a cell that carried our self-doubts, a cell for lack
of confidence, a cell for fear, for rage, a cell for emptiness, a cell
for want, a cell for which there is no name, as there is no name
for the ways we hoped language would save us.