for R

what I’d much rather to do is walk
into your Georgia home for the first
time, offer cactus honey from the desert,

dump my bag on the floor and twirl
around in a new purple skirt as if
I were only going through a phase.

I’d drink sweet tea and play endless
games of fetch with your grey-faced
dog as if there was still a way to invert

this crazy year. You’d tell me what it’s like
to live in the South, about gerimandered
lightning, pelican cousins on your fence

and how ladies like me take the time
to wish you a blessed day. When I go
outside to drink in the wet exotic air

you’ll whisper, sotto voce: “it’s every shade
of violet now, but by next week she’ll be
all sage green, creosote and ozone rain.” 
 

 

 

Selected byRaymond Huffman
Image credit:AI-generated by Open Arts Forum
Sara Clancy

Sara Clancy is a Philadelphia transplant to the Southwest.  Her chapbook Ghost Logic won the 2017 Turtle Island Quarterly Editors Choice Award. Among other places, her poems have appeared in Off the Coast, The Linnet's Wings, Crab Creek Review, The Madison Review, Misfit Magazine, Avatar Review and Verse Wisconsin. She lives in the desert with her husband, their dog, two ordinary cats and a psychotic cross-eyed one.