I-90 Abide
And here’s the problem. My stomach
hurts so bad I can’t think of birds
nesting, a green wreck rustling above
the highway, snow cliffs bright lift
over avalanche chutes and wheeling death
cookies. Pain is a tiny world. Once
traveling inland I saw a field of gulls,
in rain fields of stripped farm soil
in winter. Burnt and wet. What could
they eat there? Some aches are bigger
than sharp, take the whole day down
to minutes by minutes by no words
for some things. Oceans will rise,
lose oxygen, my father will die
suddenly tomorrow, ice hanging;
no one will call. The passes close,
fill, wait for the avalanche guns, wait
for the gull-screech, the rocks to undo.
Alison Mandaville grew up in Oregon, Turkey, Massachusetts and Yemen. Her poetry, prose, and translations from Azerbaijani have appeared or are forthcoming in Redivider, Thimble Literary, Terrain, Magma, World Literature Today and Two Lines among other places. She has received cultural heritage grants from UNESCO and Open Society Institute for work with Azerbaijani women writers and artists and splits her time between Seattle and Fresno, where she teaches comics, writing and literary civics at Fresno State.
