Asphalt meets gravel like
a mountain birthing a river,
an alarm clock. A truck
lugs shaking crates,
the bed secure as boulders
smoothed from running
engine parts across three
states: mountains, desert,
water. The path plays
a georgic game, plows
mud divots. A recent storm
set traps for anyone who slows
emboldened into pastures
long wizened and settles
down to watch the restless
cattle lift their heads, stuck
like a dusk-sun on a canvas,
wet rust in the Arizona distance.
Mark Petrie’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blackheart Magazine, Winter Tangerine Review, Geist, SNReview, Booth and other journals. He is the winner of the Academy of American Poets/Andrea Saunders Gereighty 2012 Poetry Award, as well as the 2nd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest. He lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he is a doctoral student and University Fellow in English Literature/Creative Writing at the University of Louisiana. You can find links to his work and he can be reached at markpoetrie.wordpress.com.
