Jason Fraley | Paper Trail XXVIII | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Jason Fraley is a native West Virginian who lives, works, and periodically writes in Columbus, OH. Current and prior publications include Salamander Magazine, Barrow Street, Pithead Chapel, Quarter After Eight, Mid-American Review, and Okay Donkey.

Also by Jason Fraley: Paper Trail I, II, & III Paper Trail XIV, XXI, XXII, XXIII, and XXIV Paper Trail XI

April 15, 2026

Jason Fraley

Paper Trail XXVIII

Briars and Bradford pears ripple. Out here — locals call this teenage joyride haunt TNT — the military buried munitions in small domes. The enemy would not bomb a land where bridges fall on their own. The gravel road gathers its own resistance. Chugholes with mud-riven bottoms. Ever-lengthening grass inspects the sedan’s undercarriage. Curls of chain link rust jagged. A small audience of red eyes surveil: deer, racoon, rabbits, a stray Mothman or wayward sandhill crane. Someone’s hand fumbles below my seatbelt, tears a page from a chapter now revised. I hear soft scraping as if she is drawing the night from memory. When we stop, cut the engine, the darkness is a shade of aftermath. The moon’s craters consume TNT’s soft dimples. She unzips my jacket, stuffs my page back inside. Pencil lead so thick it snuffs out my frail light.

Childhood involves mythmaking, and mine was no different. My friends and I enjoyed the mythology surrounding the Silver Bridge tragedy, especially lore that the Mothman still appeared periodically in TNT, a rural area of dirt and gravel roads near Point Pleasant, WV. I ventured a few times: the experience did not match the lore by any stretch, though it was strange to see the mounds that once held military ammunition. My hope is this poem preserves some small element of place near where I grew up, a place that may seem unremarkable to many but holds many stories on which I often reflect.