Desert Survival Guide: Motel Sounds by Elisha Holt| Really System: Issue Six

Desert Survival Guide: Motel Sounds

Elisha Holt

The crescendo of us
the Andromeda and Milky
Way
of
us

Do we ever? Do we
ever anymore?

you and I
dissolved in a glass
on the night stand in a Phoenix motel

How many nights I'm expected
to sleep alone

                                               we phone
     crackle we scratch
                  pit viper spitting ash
           on loop

static on a television set
night
           interludes
                            Time is a flat circle
                        on Porntube

How many nights before my
children know
I'm coming home

Elisha Holt is a poet of seedpods, coyotes' howl, and the wind over the chaparral. He was born in San Bernardino and raised in the rural Palo Verde Valley, a beekeeper. An MFA candidate at Cal State San Bernardino, his work has appeared in Badlands, Apercus Quarterly, Inlandia, and on the wall at The Camel Saloon.

ISSUE SIX: Smallest Eyry | next poem →