Kristina Heflin
If You Plan to Motor West….
i. stepping off
city of bright lights rises out of the cornfields planted and ploughed under with the ashes of the forgotten. once called white city, holy land glowing with alternating lights along the lake-breeze shore now sinks in dusty steel and splendor. movers and shakers on call with the world pace carpet trenches miles above sweeping grainfields. green and yellow tractor engines hum with the anthem of the folk hero and its elemental men while foreign cars sweep in a blur of primaries along the picket fence periphery until they become merely wisps of steam on the winding muggy asphalt.
ii. too close to home
pine cloys the air and snakes through the roots of the soil until it meets the teeth of the beaver and the road maintenance buzz-saw. kudzu adds wildness to a tamed nature, creeping with octopus tenacity over the monuments of humankind tearing down board by board crooked houses with crooked teeth smiling from crooked brambles. moss-gilded tombstones guard green sloping hills and murky ponds that ebb and flow through the seasons act as faithful watchdogs of the restless souls and yellow curs that wander the swamplands flea-ridden and patchy as their people.
iii. lonely star
everything’s bigger here. too big. land. sky. business. loneliness. every motorist has passed through this town. and that one. and the one after. dozens of different criss-cross roads dissect the same rubber-stamp small towns overflowing with box stores, sweaty cattle, and jesus is the answer billboards. parallel white and yellow lines never end only roll on like tumble weeds racing in the panhandle wind keeping pace with big rig drivers in the glow of the midnight truck stop neon.
iv. land of disenchantment
sky-painted plateaus slip slowly by like mushroom clouds shimmering desolation on the lifeless, puzzle-cracked ground. scorpions, snakes, flowers, birds follow the code of the land: color is danger. stay away. keep moving. crawl on your belly under layers of dust, beneath the broken glass of the abandoned gas station window, into the shadow of a six foot saguaro where empty black eyes of a skull keep watch on the burning horizon, looking, waiting for something they will never find.
v. all that glitters
carefully-controlled levee valleys shine with artificiality in the north before yawning to plastic flamingo oases in the south. immaculate lawns lifted and made up as their owners stare placidly at spectator buses while orange groves and rice fields stretch to the purple mountain horizon with mathematical precision. highways divide fencelines divide rivers in interlocking chess grids that bring water and fruit and labour and life where none should exist. self-contained units of industry, and poverty.
Kristina Heflin is an equestrian coach and instructor from Northern California. She has served on the editorial board of the literary journal Flumes and has been published in the literary journals Canyon Voices, Fearsome Critters, Shelia-Na-Gig, and Broad River Review among many others. Future publications include Red Flag Poetry and Coffin Bell Journal. When she’s not writing, she enjoys riding her horse, Lucero, and hiking with her Carolina Dog, Jessie.