This is a desert scene.
Imagine the cactus
fever green
hunger strewn across sands
but we are driving 80
so Sonoran streams
out the window.
Morning moon shining
white atop blue.
Let’s call it cerulean.
Imagine the eagles
echo over fricative land.
This is no Blood Meridian,
this is a road trip pastoral
where the sky picks at me
like a naked vulture
neck deep in the thick of me.
I smile red
spilled open
heaviest parts plucked clean
arid syllables
chambered heart
chattering eye
the sky unties me.
Picture it
pining spines of prickly pear
sweet agave
air so soft that time rises and
dear God
the heat
what’s left of me
goes with it.
Amanda Rabaduex is an Air Force veteran, lecturer, and the poetry editor of River & South Review. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Barren Magazine, Olney Magazine, and Emerge Literary Journal, among others. Originally from Ohio, she lives near Knoxville, Tennessee, and can be found at amandarabaduex.com.
