Lindsay Wilson
Holly leaves duane for Nevada
Don’t move to Nevada, I go. You’re talking crazy, I go.
I’m not talking crazy, she goes. Nothing’s crazy about Nevada.
—Raymond Carver
Daniel Gohman
After I left Duane, it bloomed Nevada.
Out there, on the open road, free
of leaf-light, I understood the many miles
to somewhere else, and I believed
in the way a heart slows like a stone,
basalt, something volcanic that once
enjoyed a great flight, and now lays half-buried
in the dirt waiting for the land to chew
it down and give it back to its bright-hot
arch like firework blossoms over
a crappy minor league baseball field,
under primordial high desert clouds,
thunderclap, bat-crack, the heart holding
its breath until the ball falls past our gaze,
peanut shells breaking beneath our exit.
On the drive home I saw Nevada
in the hills on their knees like a man
begging for forgiveness. There’s no difference
between praying and begging except who
we ask for help. Nevada in the crucified
coyote nailed to the keep-out fence. Nevada
tugging on the chopped tails lifting
for a breeze, dismembered tricksters
by the wind toppled statue of Mary,
the snake’s rattle slipping into her fractured belly
because no on believes in virgins
in Nevada, not even by the gazebo
at the old cemetery where a deep humming
seems to roll out of the distance,
and the evening shakes Nevada free
from its day-drunk nap. Listen, from the severe
cemetery hill, I watched a dust devil
twist like a rope falling from the shop-rag gray
clouds. I knew I could climb to that hole
in the sky if I wanted to leave this one, that the only
myths here stretched out in their pine boxes,
so none of them could pin me down
and show me the borders of myself,
and then Nevada seemed to rise beating its wings,
as if to say, if you still wanted to, now,
you finally could leap.
A bride opens the curtains
Twin Lakes, Mammoth, California
before her wedding, and the camera captures her
second-self’s white lace reflection on sun-warped glass,
and through her you can see the pine trees swaying
in their long-green dresses, and through them
you see the Twin Lakes, and the way water grants us our wish
of seeing wind, and through its ripples you find
the polished blue stones the lakes have chewed down
into their bellies where the night’s throat breaks open
to a groom pacing in his rented black suit practicing
his vows until his words muffle into a kind of prayer
that reminds you of how much of this world we cannot own.
This cabin. These twin lakes. This body. These words
rising from their mouths to drift across this suddenly
still mirror of water reflecting all that matters in this world,
and you understand you must memorize this to keep
it with you. If you could hold these vows like the smooth
stones scattered here in their common currency, if
you could take a hammer to this mint of rich words
and break through this granite, this river rock,
you would find me sitting on the last folding chair
in the corner, tie undone around my neck, and as the caterer
sweeps up this confetti of rice, I am already studying
tonight’s photograph, already looking for the words that open
the shutter to let through the light of this world’s twin.
The smell of something green burning with something dead
In your first childhood dream of the west,
out past the fenceless backyard where the foxtails
ready their teeth to sink in to you, Grandpa,
in his maze of tall corn and okra, is raking
the weeds with the day’s trimmings into his daily
pile of fire, the smell of something green
burning with something dead, smoke lifting
above the plants you can’t yet see beyond,
and then you’re running again to the irrigation ditch,
that stand of wild undergrowth, cap gun in hand
for the garter snakes.
One day you crouched
for hours watching what sun the weeds let through
write patience across your skin, while you listened
for tails slipping through the tattered brush
until mother came calling. You needed her to feel
that small stalk of doubt take root before revealing
yourself. How easy to part the wild grasses
and step into another life, or so you thought,
a stick with a bag tied to the end, one clean white shirt,
a juice harp, and the memories of that past life
gathered into something behind you, something
needing just a spark to make into a fire, into
a signal, for someone like you out there, staring
into the distance, waiting for a sign.
Lindsay Wilson is an English professor at Truckee Meadows Community College where he co-edits The Meadow. His first collection is No Elegies, and his recent poems have appeared in Stirring, The Raleigh Review, The Missouri Review Online, and The Carolina Quarterly. Currently he is serving as Poet Laureate of Reno, Nevada.