by Eric Roy

If you had a dollar every time
a person found you unattractive,
you would be attractive. If we each
had a dime any time an outcome came
exactly as imagined, piggy banks
would disappear like hot air balloons

into the Albuquerque sky. Some red
flags flap violently from little poles.
Some red flags hang like fake roses
in vases thin & green, dusty blooms
so uniformly crimson we accept them
as part of the atmosphere.

by Eric Roy

Slowriding down Cemetery Road, late December.
Next to me, nobody now watches paints & palominos

graze the orchard behind lines of vined wire fence.
We broke all three—the trees, the horses, the land

& on the horizon distant houses glint like silver sequins
inside tears, like container ships about to slip over

an ocean plain. How is it what we need we’re not even
aware of yet? What cool, neutral slice of pickled ginger

could be set inside our heads? Instead, I whistle the only
way I can, involuntarily, a kiss blown in disbelief

circling cemeteries in a dark cloud spitting out dark birds,
rain held in its throat like practiced words, navigating

smoke. Pollution explosion wildfire, duck & cover, smoke.
Turning into haze that enhances our sun’s infected color.

by K. Alma Peterson

Waiting for dark to simplify my view

I stand and study wild quinine in the meadow
its bright white flowers bear upon resilience.

Bluestem grasses sweep and swerve between

bursts of lupine cropping up like decades-old
conversations, images of what we wore, where

we drove, when I knew you were my ground.

It all takes place on this heath of consciousness:
swales where details flatten like blown grasses,

where petals plucked declare the place and time

where loss provoked was loss sustained,
memory mistaken for something hard-and-fast.

Thoughts are fireflies and reality is the night sky.

by K. Alma Peterson

Is there a hermitage
built for one     a cottage
near the swoosh of foliage
moan of pines
splash of plumage
a tiny house to manage
(no marriage)
rummage through without
damage    set back
from a gravel passage
lightly traveled
where I can leverage
vestiges of my physical
personage before
slippage into dotage: message me