Prayer to the Road

Old bicycles stubbornly pull sticks into their wheels,

pull everything into their mouths

like infants still discovering the world.

They often break their own teeth and jaws,

scraping their black, rubber lips

which bleed air.

They tell too many stories.

They no longer remember where

they meant to wheel us.

They pray to the roads,

endlessly kissing the asphalt like it was

a vast self-portrait

of God,

begging

and begging to stop—

yet, like a vast

self-portrait of God, they cannot stop.