Rebecca Brock

I Will Always Be Heading Somewhere


Two states ago, a wild turkey
shuttled across the highway
in front of me: its feathered foliage close 
to her body, her long neck 
reeling like oh my god oh my god oh my god.
She crossed four lanes of traffic
in less than 15 seconds,
and just missed the front grill 
of a Peterbilt.
Not all that long ago, I’d have chin-nodded
to the bird as my familiar,
foolish looking but still hustling butt,
heading toward a line of trees 
she can’t even see clearly—hurtling
toward anything just to get her own 
damn self across that road.
The road, here, is a slick ribbon, 
hovering behind and before me. 
Above me, just blue, miles of it. 
I have come farther than I ever imagined.

Back to Issue XI…


Rebecca Brock is the author of The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023). Her work appears in The Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review, THRUSH, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest at The Comstock Review and the Kelsay Books Women’s Poetry Contest. She has been a flight attendant for most of her adult life and is still surprised by this fact. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccabrock.org.