[choking moments in Ohio from "rhode island notebook 3.7.03"]
Gabriel Gudding

I-270 N 342 M 12:50 PM EST
sun out Wham! As I bounce over
the Olentangy State Scenic River
356 m fr. BL & Northwest of Columbus
2 Canada Geese traverse hwy
50 ft Above car. They do not honk.
It occurs to me I should have
honked at them
On rt, in bright sun N of Columbus,
375 m fr. BL, I see, in a muddy,
furry oval of hay, a press of
horned Kine in tumid Anoraks
feeding & lazing in sun booms:
I notice in shock they are bison.
Small hawk kites over median,
southward, yawing
STOP TO EAT, GAS, PEE 1:30 exit 151
10.1122 g 390 m = 38.57 mpg very low mpg
1:40 A fish sandwich
at McDonalds, I bite it in parking lot, choke
on the bite of hot cod puck. My sinuses ache
me.

1:52 pm EST back on road
and so Laura Bush picked up her
husband's hawky-pointy flared nostril
nose, smelled it, sniffed hard at it,
cried about it and put it safely
in her bosom brassiere. There in
turn it snuffled in little
fooms her bosom smells
76 east 2:44 pm 450.7 m fr BL.
Long steep downward slope near
Wadsworth OH, never noticed before
Traveling perpendicular to me on
an underpass beneath
the freeway, I spy a large clear white
Ford pickup w/ an immense American flag
on a 6 ft pole flickering Above its
hitch-bulb and I am once again shocked
at the ghastly, kitschy, tacky, tasteless
and disturbingly hick-like & white
non-urban, gun-bearing & ignorant

nationalism, which is. Nationalism is.
490 M 3:20 pm near Mt. Union
College, am very tired.
3:33 PM I sneeze explosively.
And, simultaneously, the loosened nose
of G W Bush sneezes between
Laura Bush's easy breasts w/ a puffing bang
rocketing the wedge of flesh
up the Valley of her cleavage
slopping her firmly under the chin
and slipping back w/ a snotty swash into her
silk and smelly valley.
Meander Reservoir 510 M 3:39 pm
80 e 3:41 pm 513 m I sneeze again
and again the loosened nose of G
W Bush burstles upward slapping
past the lip-gates of Laura Bush's mouth-lips
lodging under her Uvula. She glottal chokes
ejecting the nose, plosive phlegm-noise
follows the nose's arc outward: the nose splats in the
party's heels. A startled pause.
In the social air a bloom
of pallid phlegm unfurls. "For the
first time in my life I have
had to confess I am ashamed of my
country." -- Richard Olney, 1903, re:
Roosevelt's seizing of the Panama Canal
Pennsylvania Welcomes You 527 M
STOP TO PEE 3:53 -- 3:57

In Western Pennsylvania near
Clintonville, A bright but long-
shadowed March afternoon as the Alleghanies
begin, smattering of snows remain in
the woods and the large
meadows/small fields, but in the
median, a shallow-v in cross-section
the tan dead grass slicked-down by snow melt.
Am very achey.