Kimberly L. Wright

Down the path at the end of Gardenia, cut out
by trespassing feet like mine, I wound
next to a ravine so unmarked and unremarkable
Google Maps couldn’t tell me

where I’d been. At the beginning of the trail,
a glimmering graveyard of plastic bottles
blossoming like mushrooms feeding on damp,
aluminum cans too forgotten to hold slogans,
solemn rubber tires like evergreen wreaths
in memory of usefulness and trail-blazing
tossed pell-mell to tumble downhill

to this nonrecycling collection point. Sewer caps
like bellboy hats sessile and half-buried
poke out of red clay scarred with armies of ants,
cut bank sliding into tire ruts intermingled with raccoon prints,
a blanket of calico leaves annoyed into patches
of sullen dirt that grooves itself into
the trenches of sneakers, back yards
and brushy trees, tilting oaks swooning,
undermined by landscape erased sooty drop
by sooty drop, destined to collapse

into a chasm with aquamarine PVC pipe teeth,
tarmac and concrete shanks, a deep yaw
100 feet behind a row of houses,
windows unblinking, dormant.

By Kimberly L. Wright
First published in Southeast Review online