The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Automotive by Ceridwen Hall

This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Automotive by Ceridwen Hall, released by Finishing Line Press in 2020.

Self : Driving

I cross Indiana, northward and west. Green sharpens
some pastures; others are mud. My thoughts stretch
linear, then they scatter. Clouds waver and gleam
on the faces of ponds. Watching the new calves’
shivering walk reflected, I consider the promise
of driverless cars. Untether a threat. Absent need
to steer, would I tend—and to what? Automobile
already means self-moving. If a trance arises
between hesitations—momentum suspends me—
errors remain possible, and decisions.

Ceridwen Hall is a poet, editor, and educator from Ohio. Although she’s lived on both coasts and in the mountains, she retains a deep appreciation for the Midwest and its roads. She completed her MFA at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her PhD at the University of Utah, where she received the Clarence Snow Fellowship and the Levis Prize in Poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals.