Holden Caulfied On Reading 'Roadkill Karma' Poem by jacob erincilberto

'whacha readin' fella? '
he asked real incessantly
i finally interrupted,
'it's kerouac, jack'

he corrected me, 'jack kerouac'
and then in a stream of obscenities
i tore quotes from the novel
balled them up and swallowed them whole
laughing,

he was stunned and taken aback
and i repeated 'it's kerouac, jack'

and spit several periods in his face
which i had collected from the box of unused ones
cause kerouac didn't use too many or any
for that matter

and just kept writing into the sunset and midnight and into the morning
and the afternoon without stoppage
or roughage to help excrete
his baggage
he took on his long trips
from which he fell off often and wrote about them
when,

i finally took a breath
and said, 'what ya starin' at fella? '
but he was too dumbfounded and found me too dumb
to take seriously because he thought kerouac was a god
and i was godforsaken for getting his name wrong or backwards
or the opposite of forwards
and i just kept reading and ignoring him and wishing
he would ride off into the sunset and the midnight and the morning
and the afternoon without stoppage
and take his baggage to the bus stop
so i could stop engaging in his conversation and go back to reading
kerouac without stoppage so i could reach some destination
either the end of the book or the end of my life
or at least the end of a sentence, so i could at least use my bookmark
which just looked and felt so unused unlike me who felt used
and backwards and forwards
and rude as i chewed the last bits of the pages
i hadn't spit at the incessant questioner
who thought he had all the answers,

and if they're not in this most famous and respected novel
then where will i find the most novel and previously rejected answers
to life's most expected questions
like
'whacha readin' fella? '


erin-cilberto
5/10/o8