DRIVING I-20 BETWEEN MONROE AND JACKSON TO THE HALFWAY HOUSE, LATE FEBRUARY

by Laura Amsel

One hundred fifty analgesic feet—
at Rayville the roadside cross rises
behind barbed wire. Angus graze,

Lyre Leaf sage blooms pale blue
against drab pasture. Lovely
will forever want what’s not.

On Jonesboro Road the pulp mill’s
toxic cloud mushrooms low
over West Monroe, on Tidwell

Christmas lights still stutter,
Peterbilts, a Pit bull lunges, redbuds
pink for Easter’s easy answer.

Dogwood petals dapple the path
past the kennel where puppies nap—
an antidote for every addict.

His new tattoo’s a frowning moon;
his brunette hair’s platinum, cropped.
At Cotton, biscuits, at Standard, coffee,

a sidewalk table, cautious talk of home,
a pair of swallows nesting. Even a mother
can’t know his longing. Driving home

I crane to keep the moon in sight.
It slips away, silhouetting billboards
for vape and rated x, sagging power lines,

fracking rigs like cattle at a watering pond.
In moon-glow along the asphalt shoulder, road-
killed rabbits dance, resurrected in my backdraft.

Laura Isabela Amsel lives in Charleston, South Carolina. She holds an MA in Spanish from Middlebury College. She has poems in recent issues of Terrain, Another Chicago Magazine, Nimrod International Journal, and Atlanta Review. Her first book manuscript, A Brief Campaign of Sting and Sweet, won the 2024 Brick Road Poetry Prize and was published by Brick Road Poetry Press.