At Love's Truck Stop, Laramie, WY

Above gas pumps, the sky nurses

a cheek purpled by rain as the dirt

road snakes into prairie and, now

a swallow, I graze each fence post,

prong of barbed wire, bless it with

a sharp wing. Matthew, it's spring,

the season farthest from your death

along this road, like any other, yet

here you are, drawing wildflowers

about shoulders like a cape when

my wife, having braved the ladies'

room, emerges unscathed again as

a trucker leans on his horn, turns

onto the freeway, headed home.

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LUIZA FLYNN-GOODLETT is a poet, editor, and critic. She is the author of Look Alive—winner of the 2019 Cowles Poetry Book Prize from Southeast Missouri State University Press—along with seven chapbooks, most recently The Undead, winner of Sixth Finch Books’ 2020 Chapbook Contest, and Shadow Box, winner of the 2019 Madhouse Press Editor’s Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Fugue, Five Points, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She serves as Managing Editor of the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQ+ literary journal and press Foglifter. Her critical work has appeared in Cleaver, Pleiades, The Adroit Journal, and other venues.

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