For the longest time I couldn’t drive
with my feet in shoes, couldn’t trust the shift
unless the grit of the clutch pedal
abraded my toes. I thought I had to work
for everything. I once raced Monica
all the way to Concho Valley.
We cut six minutes
off the 20-minute drive.
Her Honda was faster than my pickup
but she was afraid to push the engine.
We sped down that adolescent median
that divides wanting not to die
from wanting to be alive
while my parents played spades
in my grandfather’s double wide trailer
moored out there to the shadows
of the Concho Country Club.
There is a depth in every desert
where you might as well be
in the middle of the ocean, the stars
tattooing an S.O.S across a silence
that spreads out for decades.
Barnacles have multiplied
over the slow shutter of my heart valves.
My hands still cling like starfish
in the dashboard’s amber glow.
And beneath the Blue Clay hills
the fossilized bones of
megafauna swim like whales.
–
Allisa Cherry’s poetry has appeared in The Maine Review, Nine Mile Magazine, The Ilanot Review, Rust + Moth, The Columbia Review, High Desert Journal, and The Account. She recently completed her MFA at Pacific University, teaches workshops for immigrants and refugees transitioning to a life in the United States, and is an associate poetry editor for West Trade Review.