Kimberly Two

Another reminder that Kimberly White will be reading at the Poems-For-All reading tonight at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 8pm. Here is another of her poems:


desert suite #3: Arizona
—Kimberly White, Sacramento

Coyote crouches low by the road
waits for the semis whizzing by
before shooting across
Be careful, Coyote,
I yell out the window
of my speeding car
as he disappears into the desert
on urgent coyote business

Why did Coyote cross the road?
To get the chicken on the other side.

Pass an offramp for
Sore Finger Road.
I could't make up a name like that.
Wonder about the story that inspired it.
There has to be one.
Try to make one up myself
but it eludes me
wonder what that says about someone
who claims to be a writer
Blame it on the stress of the road.

Jesus is Lord in Superior
screams a colorful billboard
looming over the road
into town
Every year I drive by
and flip it off
Once, I saw it in a movie.
Turn off the road into town
cruise convoluted, one-lane streets
behind boarded-up downtown
spy on dry little houses
with their desert bones
nailed to faded walls
and collected in brown-dirt yards

just like in the movie

but no movie can match any desert

One year I rode this road at night
coming back the other way
someone else was at the wheel
so my mind was free to roam
with the shooting stars
streaking across
a sky blacker than black
no other light but the stars
even the headlights
sucked into the black

there are no roads
to the places Coyote runs
on these nights

There is a river
hidden away off a rocky road
wild willow banks
roamed by mixed-blood wolves
from stray ranch dogs
Cottonwoods spread their foam
in languid desert air
floating just above the waterskin

you can cross
all of Arizona
without turning left or right

Coyote does it in his sleep.

___________________________

—Medusa