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Marko Capoferri: San Gorgonio

March 4, 2022 by PBQ Leave a Comment

White paper coffee cups collect in drifts
by the freeway exit ramp—the hearts of ghosts
once held tight then tossed out the window
of a car speeding across the desert at four a.m.
 
trying to stay awake to see, when the light
came back, what the battered face of the land 
could tell us about ourselves: how the mountains 
were stark and risen; how we were sunk dumb 
 
in between, a scathing plain of wind turbines 
resonating unearthly as Amelia Earhart’s flooded engines
chugging their final gasp on the ocean floor;  
how the sea was here once and swallowed heights, 
 
long since yawned and pulled away paving
this desert with a tired yellow dirt now blown
through our teeth, through our beating pistons,
and a few black rounded stones as souvenirs
 
from lost time; how thistle-studded towns 
were hardly refuge; how the many stones 
we had gathered were bright and jagged, 
too young by design to tell any real story; 
 
how lust and lost became an exchange in glances
through a motel’s cracked facade; how these roads 
kept on dressing down like lightning on a postcard
running fingers in the hot mouth of experience. 

Filed Under: Issue 101, Poetry 101 Tagged With: Marko Capoferri

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