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Saturday, March 12, 2022

SONNET TO KEROUAC

on his centennial

by Bradley McIlwain


Kerouac@100: The Jack Kerouac Centennial Celebration in Lowell
The Jack Kerouac Foundation


The road narrows 
And widens again—
The horizon heroes 
Fill their flasks with zen;

Poet bums 
Seeking dharma 
In mountain slums—
Wisdom that Brahma 

Bore from the beating
Beautiful pavement of the road;
Slick syllables of sweat beading
From the body scroll:

When spirit meets sole
On the dusty paperback of the globe


Bradley McIlwain is a poet who seeks to capture the chorus and consciousness of the human experience. His work has most recently appeared in The New Verse News and the Origami Poems Project. In 2021, he edited the Arthurian literary anthology New Tales of the Round Table (2021). He is the founder of the independent  coffee project Roasted Poet Press. When not drinking coffee, he is hard at work on his first novel, an American motorcycle odyssey across the midwestern US.