Like Lydia: I got a hitch in my giddy-up.
Walking down the dust-dirt drive, talking
to myself. Like my father: It’s okay
to talk to yourself, as long as you don’t answer.
Like my father: To be a prisoner in a jail of gold
is still to be a prisoner. No, that was Fernández.
Same difference. Like Joni: Anything wrapped
in bacon must be good. To say: The neighbor
took his flag down. To say: I was dirt
-colored in a land made of light. Dirt, dust
in the folds of feathers I pinched in my fingers
like the host. But I got tired of saying things.
Like Cather: The land was gold and silver,
like illustrations of fairy tales. Life, a panning
of blades; trees so rare, you could visit them
as if they were people. Like Victor:
When are you coming home? I’d been shuffling
the gravel under sunbeams broken by clouds.
To say: An angel played a Mariachi’s horns,
and afterwards laughed at his own joke.

Gabriela Valencia is an American poet and writer. Her honors include a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry and finalist recognitions from the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, CRAFT Hybrid Writing Contest, San Miguel De Allende Writers’ Conference Writing Contest, and Bermuda Triangle Prize. Her work appears in Watershed Review, Great Lakes Review, Degenerate Art Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in Poetry from Boston University, and she lives in rural Nebraska with her partner Josh and their two herding dogs, Rainer and Zola.