J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

"High Plains" by Kate Northrop

                     


  HIGH PLAINS
                                     (overnight, at 40 below)

The town drawn in and quiet, as the inside
Of a closet.  Impenetrable, as a dream

But still the interstate slides by

The semis rising from the east,
Outlined in lights, all lighted up!

And dropping into the valley again
Goodbye: they drop

Easily as coins through a broken soda machine

(easily as snow-crust struck by sun: someone I loved once
Opening the curtain and flushed, I remember in the mirror,
Mint-bright, fuck-stunned)

And they drop away from us, from our houses
Facing the prairie

Which we see tonight
As if on the brink: still, moon-white.



 the poem first appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2012
Northrop's last book was Clean

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