Driving North on I-79,
West Virginia
West Virginia
by Heather Mercer
Seventeen miles to home, night slips
beneath the highbeams and the gas station
coffee is nothing of great invention,
but I wanted to tell you anyway—
There have been advances in Styrofoam,
sugar substitute, though I still take mine
with some Robert Plant, his hey, hey, mama,
this lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
You are a straight shot across Ohio—
six hours—but I’m so damn impatient
these days waiting for this to become that,
now to become later: I didn’t notice
the magnolias blooming, the road
curving beneath me like a question mark.
____________________________
Heather Mercer was born and raised in Ohio, and recently
finished her MFA in poetry at West Virginia University. Her post-
graduate life has landed her in La Grande, Oregon, teaching
various writing courses at Eastern Oregon University. Mercer’s
poems have been previously published in Pank.
On “Driving North on I-79, West Virginia”:
This poem emerged out of a simple desire to write a poem
about Robert Plant, and as all poems do, transformed into
something completely different. This poem came from an
early spring night and the exhaustion that comes with a
nomadic existence. At this period in my life, I was never sure
whether I was coming or going, and even if I was, it didn’t
seem to matter. I was often comforted by small consistencies,
especially those of the open road. This is a sonnet for the
pavement that connects us to where we think we want to be,
those roads that eventually feel like home, even if they don’t
always lead us there.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Fall 2008 Home ►
Seventeen miles to home, night slips
beneath the highbeams and the gas station
coffee is nothing of great invention,
but I wanted to tell you anyway—
There have been advances in Styrofoam,
sugar substitute, though I still take mine
with some Robert Plant, his hey, hey, mama,
this lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
You are a straight shot across Ohio—
six hours—but I’m so damn impatient
these days waiting for this to become that,
now to become later: I didn’t notice
the magnolias blooming, the road
curving beneath me like a question mark.
____________________________
Heather Mercer was born and raised in Ohio, and recently
finished her MFA in poetry at West Virginia University. Her post-
graduate life has landed her in La Grande, Oregon, teaching
various writing courses at Eastern Oregon University. Mercer’s
poems have been previously published in Pank.
On “Driving North on I-79, West Virginia”:
This poem emerged out of a simple desire to write a poem
about Robert Plant, and as all poems do, transformed into
something completely different. This poem came from an
early spring night and the exhaustion that comes with a
nomadic existence. At this period in my life, I was never sure
whether I was coming or going, and even if I was, it didn’t
seem to matter. I was often comforted by small consistencies,
especially those of the open road. This is a sonnet for the
pavement that connects us to where we think we want to be,
those roads that eventually feel like home, even if they don’t
always lead us there.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Fall 2008 Home ►
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 3, Number 2
(Fall 2008)
Copyright © 2008
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 3, Number 2
(Fall 2008)
Copyright © 2008
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
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