Honeymoon highway over muddy 
red too thick to run. 
The sky bangs open and lifts 
up the yells from the old biker who 
flipped & cut us off 
back in Amarillo. 
Along the highway: 
scutch bangs hang, a lone buzzy 
cane cholla fans out,  
an escarpment looms in its distance, 
and a sudden flush of violet  
blooms at the median’s edge. 
Everything else 
flies by too fast  
to name it,  
clinging to this dusty effort 
where the Great  
American desert 
begins to earn that old  
terrible name. 

Seth Copeland edits petrichor and Cream City Review. He lives in Milwaukee.