When the desert highway freezes over in the dead of night,
you can lay on that cold-soaked mattress in the truckbed,
you can watch the bruised purple skin of the sky. Freckled with stars, satellites, red-eye flights
Those cracked, chapped hands, with their blisters and grimed fingernails, their brass rings,
will hold you by your nape, steadfast stuck to earth.
Next to a spare tire, a stetson hat.
With your salt-stained face, can you hear that coyote cry?
Deep in the pit of your stomach, can you taste that rabbit’s blood? Deep in the pit of the coyote’s,
can he taste yours? In a canyon close by he feeds, and in your rusted pick-up truck, so do you.
On a friend, a lover, neither.
When you’re under that stained quilt, and the wind sings as the cars drive past,
do you listen?
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Estella Burque (Sweet Rabbit) is a lesbian Mvskoke Creek writer currently living in Portland, completing a degree in creative writing at Reed College. They are the 2024 Mary Barnard Poetry Awardee.