The hills billow in the darkness.
A family of deer graze on the shoulder.
One looks up and seems to know me
like we have been here before,
this moment where her life hugs
the chalky line of the highway.
As we continue around the curve I
begin to feel a memory grazing
at the space between skin and bone,
some folded forgotten sense of wild.
I close my eyes to the dark green field.
I run and never stop running.
—
As her grandmother once said, Callie Plaxco flew the coop when she left South Carolina to journey west to the University of Wyoming for her MFA in Creative Writing. Still in Wyoming, Callie lives with her husband, two small boys, and two big dogs. Her chapbook Dear Person is available at Dancing Girl Press and individual poems have appeared in Carve Magazine, Tinderbox, SWWIM and Sugar House Review. She is the 2024 recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council’s Neltje Blanchan Writing Award.
