Long Division

Matthew W. Baker currently lives in Reno, NV and teaches middle and high school English. He received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nevada, Reno. Some of his work has appeared in The Matador Review, Booth Journal, Sundog Lit, Sierra Nevada Review, Yemassee Journal, The Meadow, and Swamp Ape Review, among others. Follow him on Twitter @mmbakes

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Long Division

The sky sears itself into ground. Rain waves

beat dirt into rock lines, cut paths between

sandstone shelves. Like skyscrapers beaconing

through night, plants pulse in these cracks—creosote,

sage—stark green against the beige background. Whispers

linger. Wind whines through crags each evening stories

of people blooming across the desert

passing under these stone arches: windows

to a star-blotted horizon where ground

meets sky again and falls into black—

Here the poet, here a dancer stretched out

all wingspan and verb to translate each bush’s

breath into meaning. Who can map the cliff

face, triangulate the valley’s heart? “Face,”

“heart”—how poetry languages rock, tongues

air, says “god” says “nature.” Like pendulums,

words wade into dark then come back shimmering

but never exactly how the poet wants.

He can’t help dividing and dividing

the image. But what the poet forgets

the body remembers: to smell, to lung

the dust, to listen. To stand as part of

the clockwork of the earth of which it can

only ever be one small piece.