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

PHB

My photo
Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

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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