Sego Canyon, Utah, September 2019
I stare at the figures dancing with snakes wearing
necklaces wide as palmed hands on the canyon wall.
Across the rugged, dirt road I spot another cavity of red rock
written in figures with hallowed eyes behind a No Trespassing Sign.
I think for a moment of jumping the barbed wire,
but my loneliness beneath the falling desert sun feels
too lifeless to risk the chance of landing on a gunman’s land.
Instead, I catch that last pocket of sunlight from the red walls
like a butterfly caught in a child’s net
and return to the highway I drove many moons ago
but now can’t seem to name. Even the melons for sale signs and gas stations
look like life-sized toys at the mercy of another boom and bust
economy that so many pit-stop towns suffer through –
first the railroad, second oil, finally the army missile range
all gone now. I drive beyond Green River
and stop at the mercy of hoodoos to stand beneath them and for a moment,
call it mine. But I am only an artifact floating in space
who at any chance may call it quits but
can’t quite find the path away
from it all, so instead, I witness
the stars spin from the desert floor
and think of you – wearing my love etched
to your skin like art or memories made
visible, like the legless figures on the
canyon wall, you wearing me until weathered,
and old, it washes away –
and we are left with only light.
Jessica McDermott’s work has appeared in The Apeiron Review, Manifest West, and Green Panda Press, among others. She received her M.F.A. in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Idaho where she was nonfiction editor for Fugue Literary Journal. She is an avid hiker and environmentalist. She is currently working on a collaborative art and poetry chapbook with her cousin, artist Emily Hemstreet.
Featured image created by Emily Hemstreet