River Bends
Marie Landau My ends feel weak tracing the constellation on a shoulder where bot flies burrowed—the same name of the mountain range where our boots plodded soggy along the river searching for the swimming hole. Is this it, is this it, our mouths repeating after every bend. We finally found water deep enough to pick our feet up off the bed. My torso floated teeth showing for the first time all day and your voice called out, are those cow pies and if it’s giardia you’ll know soon enough. On the walk back to the car you said, look out and I thought it was a snake but it was just a prickly bush and you said I should have trusted you but you were supposed to find the swimming hole and instead we walked our boots so heavy and warm our lips so chapped so puckered in the sun. |
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About the Author: Marie Landau is an editor at the University of New Mexico Press and a member of Dirt City Writers, an Albuquerque-based literary collective. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Daily Gramma, District Lit, scissors & spackle, Powder Keg, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere.