Daniela Uslan - Traveler and Writer

Macaroni becomes a plane:
"Zoom zoom open up for landing,"
Mom says, and orange gobs grow
wings, slosh from tongue to belly,
on their way picking
up passengers, window covers that slide

down to hide the sky, stewards sliding
carts filled with plain
tasting pies packed in plastic you pick
off with your fingernails. It lands
in your legs, motor burns your belly,
and since then, you're aching to grow

your own navigation system. You grow
owning a constant slide
show in your belly -
Guatemalan lakes, Indian plains,
Spanish cities, lonely lengths of land
rise in you. Your hands pick

"On The Road Again" on the guitar, pick
out cities that will grow
sewer systems in your sides. You're a wild plot of land,
littered with wanderlust weeds. You slide
into your map-mind, where your plain
hands are inked with henna and your belly

bulges with corn tortillas. All your belly
laughs begin here and end elsewhere. You long to pick
corn in an Eastern farm at dawn, by noon the plains
lie low in your imagination, and as day grows
so does the urge to slide
skyward; to lift and let land

fade in your postcard windows, to land
your hands on the steering wheel. You, a belly,
hunger for space, for sidewalks sliding
for destinations and new locations, to pick
your next move. You grow
yellow lines, and the plain

image of a road grows on your belly -
you are a stretch of asphalt picking through the plains,
a high-speed expressway sliding through the land.