Becca Yenser

Oil-soaked eggplant, red chile handstand,

Beans, beans, beans.

Fresh tortillas are still just tortillas.

Eggs never meant a thing to me

Unless they lolled, breast-like;

Jellied into my mouth like home.

After breakfast we ride down streets

Named for natural resources, named for ores.

This one is Coal. This is the artery

That will strike the motherlode of grass,

Finer than you can imagine. The smell of lawn

Sends me down a hill like a roly poly bug,

But without defenses. My silver hair

Has turned to straw, just like in a folk story.

Home is too far away; I could never find it now.

California wiped my nose clean.

Restaurants became rest stops,

And rest stops amphitheaters of me versus you.

No matter. New Mexico. Where pinacate beetles

Walk ass-forward, where parking lots are sand pits,

Where the river is called the Rio Grande 

I can do the splits over it, spitting into the water,

Calling all the ducks slow.


New Mexico, New Mexico. I can’t seem to find

Coffee black enough to wake me up. Shreds of Oregon

Fall through my fingers in the morning, but in a trance

I can only pay attention to the whoo-whoo-whoo of the

Mourning Dove.

The Mourning Dove is easily recognized by its three coos,

which truly do sound somewhat mournful,

A book reads, whereas the Inca’s song is ‘coo-hoo, coo-hoo’

Which sounds like ‘no hope, no hope.’

And then the church bells, on the hour, marking how much

Time I’ve wasted. And that was just today.