Invitation
I cannot describe my aeipathy for you, so I sift
through an orange and stony desert.
Its immense world
beneath each fuzzy, violet Antelope Bitterbrush. Its pouring scree
and dry bed rivers and hot antivenom
for indifference.
Mycologists comb for lichens
that find their way through ancient plutonic rocks
to thrive on petrified wood.
Waters come and go. Monsoon season too.
Pocketing home a pink stone
no bigger than a heart,
it props open the side door
hoping you will stop by.
Planck Time
you are not the reader
tethering buoys at elbows
carefully drawing herself
back from where sea and galaxy
enfold their blue bodies
you are not this poem
bowing under July’s
purple night
parched with desire
disguised in philosophy
you are not tamed
barn cat purring orange
and dressed in hay
scratching
in sundown sweet
you are lack
like warm wind
to late October
and all of you
slips just beyond me
Elizabeth S. Gunn (www.elizabethsgunn.com) serves as the Dean of the School of Arts, Sciences, and Business at Nevada State University. She writes poetry and fiction in Henderson, Nevada, where she lives with her wife and their three rescue pups in the endless Mojave Desert.
January House Literary Journal 
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