We Lie on Our Backs in the Desert

 

 

Just eloped, we try to read our future

in the stars, but the sky is too big

and those fiery orbs too far.

 

How will we move through a world

that is so easy to fall from? How will

we hold the soles of our shoes

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to the ground without slipping off

the earth’s edge? We are so

magnificently new and small

amongst Joshua Trees and rocks

 

and mountain hallways of the planet.

And no one knows we are here. 

 

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Over the Prairie

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The sky expands towards infinity,

but I can see the glass of this marble.

Maybe it is enough to be neon

bee boxes and pumpkins, humming

as they bake in the sun.

 

 

 

 

Dignity

 

 

He told me that you never find turtle corpses

because coyotes eat their turtle meat, snouts

and tongues cleaning out the hulls. Indeed,

the only turtles left in their shells are those

mashed, off guard, mid-road. I want instead

to imagine turtles burrowing into lake muck.  

Perhaps, turtles, like wizened grandpas, believe

in dignity. Their wrinkled necks and noses

never want to be seen uncouth, outside

of shells. My father is neither wise nor turtle—

more like the one in the middle of the road,

belly-side up, flipped by a lumber truck, spinning

towards rear wheels, spinning in desperate circles.

He doesn’t pull in his arms, all swollen elbows and nails.