Spring 2011, Volume 10

Poetry by Linda Lancione Moyer

What It Was Like

The Tewa man at the pueblo said the more
the sun beat down, the cooler his mud house.
He’d lived in the East so agreed the eye was glad
to rest on far horizons, the evening sky-bowl
tempered by flames and smoke. North of town,
Taos Mountain glowers over the newly
remodeled supermarket, where “Grand Opening” banners
flap over construction rubble and backhoe lights bore
through rising dust at midnight. On the mesa
more mansions with kiva fireplaces go up,
more thirsty golf courses, while native farmers
count on water that sluices through ancient acequias,
a word like the strong current of the Rio Grande
careening past the outdoor restaurant at Embudo Station,
where we ate—believe it or not—portobello enchiladas
and twinkly lights went on just as the last of the sun
disappeared from the pink cliffs behind us.

 

 

BIO: Linda Lancione Moyer writes fiction, poetry, and essays. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Baltimore Review, Carquinez Review, Cimarron Review, Clackamas Review, Compass Rose, Connecticut Review, Crazyhorse, Eclipse, Harpur Palate, Hawaii Pacific Review, International Poetry Review, Italian Americana, The Jabberwock Review, Louisiana Literature, The MacGuffin, Madison Review, Notre Dame Review, The Old Red Kimono, Pacific Review, Pearl, The Pinch, Poet Lore, PMS, Post Road, Southern Indiana Review, South Dakota Review, The Sun, Wisconsin Review, and elsewhere. In addition, my poems have appeared in three anthologies and in my chapbooks, Wanting the Moon, This Short Season, and 2% Organic. For John Muir Publications, she has written two travel guides (with Burl Willes), Undiscovered Islands of the Mediterranean and Undiscovered Islands of the U.S. and Canadian West Coast.
   A former community college teacher, she was educated at Middlebury College and at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a resident at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony on three separate occasions and in summer 2008 was a fellow at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico.