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.
