Yes, it was a kind of terror. As if fingering
the spine of a book, then finding
every page is gone. In this admission,
children can go missing,
houses burn. No one comes.
The other version is this: the road goes on forever:
lined in Ocotillo, pure hot tarmac
throughout the valley,
along the skeleton coast–
Louise Mathias is the author of Lark Apprentice, which won the New Issues Poetry Prize, and The Traps (forthcoming from Four Way Books). She splits her time between the wilds of Joshua Tree, California and the wilds of Northern Indiana. Her website is www.louisemathias.com.
*Photo courtesy of shindoverse.