i posted a set of these last year

More Postcards from a Family Roadtrip

Through the American West



T———,

At dusk there is a shift change. The swallows swoop and disappear. The bats a noiseless cyclone as they make their egress. To achieve a good round number, I’m calculating bats per second. They won’t fly in your hair, though the fear is legitimate.

Opting for echolocation,

M———



T———,

In this town the water makes better suds. Tastier too. Creatures evolve to blend with the landscape despite the manganese. Stratified sandstone purples. Behind me someone asks if iron oxide arrived here from the core of the earth.

Following dinosaur tracks,

M———



T———,

The wind can make parabolas of sand. To avoid burial, I try to outgrow the dune with the yucca. Thin and spindly. If a drift, a collapse. Heat and radio waves emanate from literally everything.

Comparing baseball diamonds to satellite dishes,

M———



T———,

Saguaro have more arms than is properly anthropomorphic. A cactus too close to that maidenhair fern. The farmstand melon is ripe but nary a knife for miles. This rock is quite porous; it dripped on me.

Washing just the dirty part of my pants,

M———




T———,

It looks like a wood chip but I promise you it’s a mineral. We could just let the silica seep in, petrify. If a curse imposes, you can send it back with a note of apology. Every waitress asked me red or green.

With better lapidary skills,

M———



T———,

Can this natural bridge be superimposed on a catenary arch? I keep having these feelings I worry are religious, but I still don’t know a butte from a mesa. A plateau of subtle distinction. It’s all earthly from my boat.

At a wakeless speed,

M———



T———,

A narrow passageway will intensify the drama of entering a room. The kind of place without velvet ropes. Standing on the head of a drum, the tour guide was acoustically accurate. Please sit in the origami chair.

Cropping the masonry out of the photograph,

M———



T———,

You could scrape crude geometrics into the skin of this lava, but someone beat you by six hundred years. A deer with a head at both ends. This place where you can touch both walls of the canyon simultaneously.

Rafting a virgin river,

M———



T———,

I hike in order to feel alone. If there were a language with nothing but vowels and glottal stops. Or we could hot air balloon. I’d see everything in late afternoon light if I could.

From the highest point in Texas,

M———