Hiatus, episode I

Road trip. Canada. Not a jetset, but a hiatus nonetheless. I am going to cold, ear-flap-hat-wearing, cheap-beer-swilling, ice-fishing, beaver-trapping, eh-saying...paradise.

Don't send a search party.

I don't want to come back.


Iggich isuat*

Mountains do not end here.
We’re stuck between them, a dry and winding
road throwing us together—

Aurora and three dogs
and me at the wheel,
victims of last year’s forest fires

sentinel over the pavement,
black and withered,
and Aurora sneaks the dogs

cheese crackers
and tells me how she strips now,
her name’s brilliance

reduced to this: blue and purple
disco lights
flashing

on the parts of herself
she hides now in scarves, in long hemp
skirts, just as her face was hidden

when I picked her up,
thumbing her way back to town
215 miles from home,

and we share the last cheese cracker
while the mountains siphon
us from the city,

burnt cottonwoods’ limbless trunks
soaking up our talk like water,
like Aurora’s dream

of planting strawberries next year
is the river they long for,
the glacial blue

nourishment they so desperately need.