Becca Yenser

Don’t panic at what the rock is made of,

Just hike it, blissed out, nieve, rosy.

The sonic boom in your ears

Is a massage of locusts, cicadas.

One hits you in the chest. Those are dense

Little buggers, he says,

Feet trailing sideways in the dust

Ahead of you, always you never

Know where you are in the desert;

Find your way by pinpricks, by towers,

By the rock shaped most

like a camel, or a ship’s mast.

Porcupine you. How stupid. Falling

In love, falling in grace, are you falling

Closer to your true age? 38.

Say it, 38. A dream of dreams curtailed

You cold, cold-clocked you in

Those alleys you made yourself,

Raised yourself in, out of, like a new citizen

Or an old one of some second-rate country.

States shift. They enable. You

Can’t even remember the way mold grew

Over everything in Oregon, how your car

Would carry lichen, how your hippie neighbor

Would swing her ax into the new seasoned

Wood from New Seasons. You don’t even

Recall the way you smelled of plywood;

How your thighs filled out that fall

From eating warm eggs twice a day.

Now a thin Pilsner, relax. Meet a man

Named Darryl. Wait for your love

To tame his guitars alone in his salt box.

Let this city have you.