The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have R. G. Evans serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2022.
“The Fantastic End of America”
—Jack Kerouac
by R.G. Evans
First the bang. Then the whimper. Now this.
Our Lady of the Highways hitching a ride west
where even she believes she’ll find the dream.
She ends up hoofing it, skulls like globes underfoot,
indigenous stepping stones across rivers
and arroyos, deserts and grassland plains.
All the ghosts along the way. The Pioneer Spirit
weeping on the edge of the trail. The Angel Moroni
climbing his own golden spires, like Kong winged but doomed.
Manifest Destiny itself barely recognizable
among the fast food chain cholesterols plants.
Progress may have stalled, but Our Lady keeps on
truckin’, pedal to the metal, balling the jack,
following the sun as it falls out of the sky
somewhere in the Pacific, gentle waves lapping
the Nevada shoreline. Our Lady hikes up her skirt
and cools her aching dogs in the breakers.
It’s there she sees it, washed up on the sand
like Charlton Heston’s fever dream, the sign
edited by entropy like everything else:
HO LYWOOD.
“The Fantastic End of America” is the final poem in my latest book, Imagine Sisyphus Happy. I remember reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road when I was a much younger man—the age that book is supposed to inspire you! —but I just couldn’t get into it. When I reread it a few years ago, I was ready to receive it, and the book’s greatness became manifest. One line in particular stayed with me and became the title of this poem.
As you drive southbound on I-95 out of Delaware and into my home state of Maryland, off to your left you can see a statue at the Oblates of Saint Francis De Sales seminary of the Virgin Mary, “Our Lady of the Highways.” I imagined her climbing down off her pedestal and hoofing it across America like R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural (“Keep on truckin’!”). The end of the poem is a visual pun based on the famous final scene in the original Planet of the Apes movie.
Here's hoping the title and the poem’s final image remain in the realm of fiction.
R.G. Evans’s books include Overtipping the Ferryman (Aldrich Poetry Press Prize), The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His original songs were featured in the poetry documentaries All That Lies Between Us and Unburying Malcolm Miller, and his collection of original songs, Sweet Old Life, is available on most streaming platforms. Evans teaches creative writing at Rowan University. Website: www.rgevanswriter.com