Peggy Dobreer

Smoke Trails & Starlight

She wanted to be wrapped up strong,
stay longer than awhile. You should know
that to her the smell of earth smacked of pine.

You should know that lathering her hair washed
away a hundred silent crimes committed against
each crimson strand. Out by the roots.

She pulled and rowed, a hot night wind
crept up in which a girl might be caught.
You should know how a country seethes like
an avalanche of disregard against the fray.

For how much less can we keep going? She’d
go, if he asked? The rumble seat in a Model T
is a fast star through a date grove, a pile
of clean stable blankets and sky.

He could call up the smell of those blankets,
rub his gums like a hay wagon up to the grove.
Like coyotes howling along the ridge, or UFO’s
leaving a faint trail of smoke across the sky.

Peggy Dobreer has two books published with Moon Tide Press: Drop and Dazzle and In the Lake of your Bones. In August she will present E=Mc2Bodied Poetry Workshop at Camera Obscura in Santa Monica (with Brendan Constantine) Upcoming work is available in Aeolian Harp, Vol 5 from Glass Lyre Press. She is a poet in residence with The Poetry Brothel West Coast and is honored to be a part of The Los Angeles Press – V3 – Gen X Summer.