Miriam Sagan
Nebraska
I pay three dollars
to enter the dusty
overheated room
of the roadside museum
mammoth skeleton
rises huge as the moon
over the eroded striations
of badlands
like driving at night
with a stranger
who must tell the whole
sad story of her life
things are closer
than we realize
or further away
the gift shop
has split your own geodes
and a star map
tacked to the wall
driving through Harrison
I buy two potatoes
and an onion
for soup
from a woman
who doesn’t ask how I am
just clutches a cigarette
steps out onto the porch to smoke.
Miriam Sagan is the author of 30 books, including the novel Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher, 2015) and Geographic: A Memoir of Time and Space (Casa de Snapdragon). Winner of the 2016 Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in Poetry. She founded and headed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement in 2017. Her blog, Miriam’s Well, has a thousand daily readers. She has been a writer in residence in two national parks, at Yaddo, MacDowell, Colorado Art Ranch, Andrew’s Experimental Forest, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Iceland’s Gullkistan Residency for creative people, and another dozen or so remote and unique places. Her awards include the Santa Fe Mayor’s award for Excellence in the Arts, the Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, and A Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa.
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