Salt Lake City
All winter, the air is at
record-breaking levels
of toxicity; announcers
warn not to go out into
the red days. Seagulls
displaced from coastal
cities cry poison over
the desert planes. We
pretend not to live
where we do, that we
don’t turn away from
each other with regret.
I try to avoid breathing
in your scent. Long ago,
glaciers carved this valley,
then melted away
into sand. The change
was torture, and now
the stunned hills shudder,
go white. You see, it’s not
a simple mimesis: memory
for landscape. It’s the silence,
the smog, my skin blazing
for you like a lamp at the end
of a wharf where an ocean
never was, or was so long
past it doesn’t matter.
I can’t stand it anymore.
At night, when I walk out,
I feel the crush of shells
beneath my feet—mollusks
fooled by the cool, wet air,
so at first I think I’ve arrived
at a shore, then I see how
I’ve murdered what would
have delighted me: how they
must have shone in the dark,
reaching out their antennae
before them, blind and gleaming.
I find no pearls within
their ruined flesh. I know
that you will never touch me.