Come on back soon! said the faded yellow on a
rickety billboard as we high-tailed it out of that place,
final nod to our little sandstorm of history there.
Defeated & bleached, a desert town impossible
to live with, pretty in her way, but really a passing
darkening— shuttered Air Force base, bankrupt
horse farm, abandoned shadow, with the world’s
tallest thermometer caked in pigeon turd. Out on Yucca
Road, folks parked all day & night around the
crumbling hospital for birth or death, & there, it turned
out, Lacey, who once was good & saw only good,
worked in the clinic kitchen, before I stole her away
in my old red Chevy, though not for too long. She took
someone else’s name when she ditched back to Piute,
though years later I got a Christmas card from her,
with a pretty, hand-painted cactus-&-donkey nativity
on the cover, the words Come on back soon!
scrawled inside, with a pink heart, lipstick kisses.
It did not persuade. The past is best left for letting be.
--
Michael Dwayne Smith haunts many literary houses, including Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, The Cortland Review, New World Writing, Chiron Review, Monkeybicycle, and Heavy Feather Review. Author of four books, recipient of the Hinderaker Prize for poetry, the Polonsky Prize for fiction, and a multiple-time Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net nominee, he lives near a Mojave Desert ghost town with his family and rescued horses.