New West Poetry
Two Poems from Katie Phillips’ ‘Driving Montana, Alone’
By Katie Phillips, Guest Writer, 4-29-11
New West closes out National Poetry Month with two poems by Katie Phillips, whose Driving Montana, Alone won the 2010 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. Phillips grew up in Maryland and Colorado and lived in Montana before moving to a suburb of Chicago. She has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Iowa and feels fortunate that she can walk to work with her dog, Sasha. Her poems have been published in the Cider Press Review, the Raintown Review, the White Pelican Review, and elsewhere. Driving Montana, Alone is illustrated by several of Phillips’ photographs of Montana, and the title poem was recently featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac.
Moab
I can see myself
growing lonely at the corner
of Uranium and Main.
having dated all the men,
I will take to the desert
to watch my life
slip away on the slick rock
or bloom like scorpions
chasing water out of a mud flat crack.
The best I can hope for
is life as a claret cup cactus,
desert rose, glowing among thorns,
proof of myself in this sandy draw—
color, my only explanation.
Reincarnation
At various times, I have wanted to be
the desert cactus in full bloom
or a flock of manic swallows feasting
on newborn bugs, wings still wet in evening.
But now I think, maybe, the mouse we cornered tonight.
Trembling in the beam of your flashlight,
his eyes could not open any wider.
I kept him at bay with a broom
while we argued about what to do.
You wanted to be quick;
I wanted to leave the door open.
He stared and moved farther to the corner,
his tail crawling up the wall.
The tin can we shoved him in
was an embrace, and the field
where we freed him, a sky wide open.
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