Kate DeBolt

DESERT LANDSCAPE
           Descending, with turbulence

O how New Mexico
gilds every thing:
the dead tawny
edges of its ditches,
green pools shining
mirror-bright.
Feathergrass &
butcherpaper
mountains all
the way down.
We go down
headfirst, argue
about color:
it’s not quite
brown. Isn’t gold.
It licks at the edge
of winter like a
flame. It doesn’t
flare before it goes.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DARKNESS
           Deming, NM

Starlight doesn’t suffice;
here, light powers light

& fields of wind
turn the planet.

Red eyes blink the dusk
that falls all around the blue

of the shell of the egg of this car.

It’s home
for our love as long as

we’re here. Split the atom,

it doesn’t matter. The dead
thrum with the turbines

in rows of ten; it isn’t
a mournful sound. Only

a keeping
of accounts.

---

Kate DeBolt holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and is an Assistant Poetry Editor for The Four Way Review. She has work forthcoming in The High Window; she has been previously published in Atlas + Alice, Noble / Gas Qtrly, The Adroit Journal, Dialogist, Bluestem, and Plain Spoke, among others.