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i never remember the types of clouds
 
hollie dugas

but we’re under a big one

coasting modestly above us

past the lonely potholes

on highway 550 in a quiet band.

We are having another fall out,

our words dancing dirty, grinding

in full circles, and I am trying not to

let on that I feel an orgasm coming,

billowing under my seat, 100,000 miles

of vessels in my body on their toes.

And with the desert heat suckling

my inner thighs, I look up,

concentrate on the milky ripple

changing shape, evolving into two,

a jaguar and water buffalo chewing

at the soft edges of blue, each breed

of plume indifferent to me watching.

And why can’t this be my heaven,

fresh as hell, a home away where

we can rediscover truth? I pick

another cloud, bulbous in its patch

of sky, to hide my tiny gift from god,

place it like a drop of thunder 

in a pocket of air hovering between

what is said and not. I let my eyes

follow the twisted bundle rolling

above the desert; my small ache

seeking nurture in the sky, and us

driving until everything turns to color.

Hollie Dugas lives and teaches in New Mexico. Her work has been selected to be included in Barrow Street, Crab Creek Review, Pembroke, Potomac Review, Under the Gum Tree, and CALYX. Hollie's work has appeared as finalists for the Peseroff Prize at Breakwater Review, Greg Grummer Poetry Prize at Phoebe, Fugue, and has received Honorable Mention in Broad River Review Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). She is currently a member on the editorial board for Off the Coast.

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