Michael Gushue

 WHY ARE THERE SO MANY QUESTIONS?

  Wittgenstein says speaking is a part
  of a form of life. But who said life’s
  a revolving door, open and closed?
   
  Life wants to be a highway but turns
  into a roundabout with no right of way.
  Headed into the city, it zooms in on me
   
  as I inch forward in traffic salted
  with drizzle while songs from the dash
  scrape like a bush full of starlings.
   
  Life swims towards the light
  dripping on wet streets as my car
  sputters to a halt and I step
   
  into the overflowing curb.  Speech
  parallel parks at the Village Vanguard
  and the question the door asks is part
   
  of a form of a nightclub I wish I were in,
  out of the drench, where she sings Where
  Have You Gone? and Why Ask Why?
   
  and What’ll I Do? in her beauty-choked voice—
  whiskey-colored light and the trumpet’s smoke
  cuts through the haze and drifts to my table:
   
  if speech wants you to make everything as gorgeous
  as you can, look how music enters your body.
  What does it say? I’m here. What do you say? Dance?

Michael Gushue is poetry editor for the Washington Spark, co-coordinates the Brookland Poetry Series, and co-runs Vrzhu Press. His poems have appeared, among other places, in the Cream City Review, the Indiana Review, Hotel Amerika, Redivider, Third Coast and online in the The Germ and Beltway. His chapbook, Gathering Down Women, is available from Pudding House Press. His day job is in international development and his home is in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC.