The Thing Dead on the Road
I’m afraid I was wrong about the world ending.
The man sitting on the bench—is simply a man on fire.
His fingers; reaching for solitude, something
brief. The day becomes a sigh of pigeons digging
For stones. I stand near the station
Too sick to notice the bench—or the man—or fire
Or whether I’ve been spared from grief.
Even the roadkill, coveting concrete, stands
And walks. Where are those left behind?
I thought I knew something
About Armageddon. I apologize,
But when the world pauses, I will sing naked
In the heat and grow a forest of sycamores.
Who can survive an apocalypse
And live? I made the roadkill a god
But I’m not allowed to speak for god
So I wait.
Copyright © 2025 by Brian Gyamfi. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 1, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘The Thing Dead on the Road’ moves through the afterimage of catastrophe to ask what it means to survive an apocalypse. I’m interested in Black ontology—a way of defining existence, spirit, and self outside [of] colonial metaphysics. In the poem, survival is not salvation but a condition: the mind persisting amid what should have ended it. It’s a meditation on what remains animate after devastation, and on how the imagination, even scorched, continues to bear witness.”
—Brian Gyamfi
Brian Gyamfi
