Sarah Pape teaches English and works as the Managing Editor of Watershed Review at Chico State. Her poetry and prose has recently been published in:Passages North, Ecotone, Crab Orchard Review, Bluestem, The Pinch, Smartish Pace, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others. She curates community literary programming and is a member of the Quoin Collective, a local letterpress group. Check out her website for more: www.sarahpape.com.
Ruination Atlas
A shock of marigold nestles in the hull of a toilet bowl,
men on boy bikes, corrugated shelters sag with gravel,
two filthy shepherds, fur mudridden and obscured
behind chain link, pace against the curve of road.
I am a daughter of this terminal pastoral, camel hide hills
turned black with lightning. At the benefit potluck,
an EMT tells me she knows the south side of my hometown.
And about a woman, bedridden in a room full of people
where none knew her name. Each held a different kind
of animal, gnashing the brine air. My beloved childhood
paraphernalia. A born-in geography, suicide plateau.