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How to Reach It
By Letitia Trent
No maps to the place (No blue and red
highway threads [the coordinates uncertain, cartographers
having no interest, no business
with these fresh cut channels, their red,
churned edges, ditches hashed
with cat bones {or slow-settling armadillo husks, the stiff fur
of fierce, toothy creatures}
and who has time to dash each new cut
along the bar graph?] though some locals
[their pools
of grey water, rusty barrels of refuse
shredding and shrinking
under a wig of fire] thank the merciful Jesus
for their official absence [not to mention
the trailers {drawers spilling pills in blister packs,
buckets of iodine tincture, shred matchbooks} dogs
pacing the grassless plot] from anyone’s
easy notice, easy witness) but I can take you— I mapped it
on my palm, inked the way each time it rose again against
the confused, sun dumb blue, obliterating (no way
but over that mountain,
no loop of roadway around it [has anyone ever
climbed, alone, over?]) any heights beyond it.
Letitia Trent's work has appeared in The Denver Quarterly, Folio, Ocho, Blazevox, and Gulfstream, among other literary magazines both in print and online. Her chapbook, The Medical Diaries, is available from Scantily Clad Press.
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