Lawrence Lenhart

make, out

On dingy bluff
where we go, starrily
as teens would  for canoodling
 
he jerks at emergency braking
& steel cables latch us in place

to this mesa
where mass gets certified
& gammy squirrels
vault in sylvan orbit
 
the scurrilous corvids
keek from their roost
heeding our sudden fog-up
 
with my free hand do I
trace sad smileys
squeaky slip-stick friction
a glide of sebum prints

I shouldn’t
facepalm
when this cringy
monster magnet trope
plays itself out
so I won’t

instead, make my canvas blank
with trepid huffs, blown out
landing molecularly thin
as nucleation
 
onto layers of breath
I wait to etch
my S.O.S.

Lawrence Lenhart (he/him/his) studied writing at the University of Pittsburgh and holds an MFA from the University of Arizona. His essay collections include The Well-Stocked and Gilded Cage (Outpost19), Backvalley Ferrets (University of Georgia), and Of No Ground (West Virginia University). With Will Cordeiro, he is the author of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury). He is Associate Chair of English at Northern Arizona University where he teaches fiction, nonfiction, and climate science narratives. Lenhart is reviews editor at DIAGRAM and founding editor of Carbon Copy. www.lawrencelenhart.com. Twitter: @law_is_len