{"id":10083,"date":"2025-02-23T00:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T00:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/?p=10083"},"modified":"2025-02-23T21:37:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T21:37:43","slug":"the-intersection-by-aaron-poochigian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/the-intersection-by-aaron-poochigian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Intersection by Aaron Poochigian"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10086 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/The-Intersection.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/The-Intersection.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/The-Intersection-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/The-Intersection-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/The-Intersection-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/The-Intersection-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 1600px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 1600\/900;\" \/><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">The Intersection<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">by Aaron Poochigian<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One Wednesday in America at night<br \/>\nsomeone was in a pickup running, running<br \/>\nfrom wrong back there where nothing worked out right:<br \/>\nthe hopes that bombed, the love that turned to shunning,<br \/>\njail, juvie and a neonatal ward.<\/p>\n<p>Sucked up into injustice, he ignored<br \/>\nall that his wide-eyed high beams brought to light.<br \/>\nQuail flickered, and abrupt mile markers grew<br \/>\ngreener, then swooped into the past abaft.<br \/>\nA plastic bag lurched like a twisted kite.<br \/>\nA farm with barn and slaughterhouse, a raft<br \/>\nof lit efficiency, came passing through.<br \/>\nBut these phantasmagoric waifs and ghostly<br \/>\nsurprises surfaced harum-scarum. Mostly<br \/>\nthe edgeline, white and wanting to be true,<br \/>\ndrunkenly went about the brink it drew,<br \/>\nand center strips stitched contours as they dashed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Such wonders failed to fetch our absentee.<br \/>\nSoon, though, a far-off nodding body flashed<br \/>\na telltale yellow, a portentous code<br \/>\nthat yanked him outward from his beef with life.<br \/>\nThe omen spoke:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">there was another road<br \/>\napproaching, an oblique trajectory<br \/>\nathwart the one that drove him. It would run,<br \/>\nwith time, as main street through some center rife<br \/>\nwith bars and diners, with the interplay<br \/>\nof known dead-ends and new things to be done.<br \/>\nSure, there\u2019d be more flush bosses grudging pay,<br \/>\nmore bible-thumpers damning real fun,<br \/>\nmore girls who won\u2019t give you the time of day,<br \/>\nbut it might be a change.<\/p>\n<p>There was no one<br \/>\nto yield to, but he stopped there anyway.<\/p>\n<p>###<\/p>\n<p>AARON POOCHIGIAN earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His latest poetry collection,\u00a0<i>American Divine<\/i>, the winner of the Richard Wilbur Award, came out in 2021. He has published numerous translations with Penguin Classics and W.W. Norton. His work has appeared in such publications as\u00a0<i>Best American Poetry<\/i>,\u00a0<i>The\u00a0Paris Review<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>POETRY<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AARON POOCHIGIAN earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem","category-contemporary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}