Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine # 14

Anza Borrego That night, the desert, the silver sand’s expanse made bigger by our being lost, stuck in my hatchback, that poor car spinning its old wheels in a ditch backlit by stars and lush planets, visible as our naked limbs in the creosote dusk.

I was 21, spent from the city, night’s pink-tinted sunrise a gift wrapped in tissue. And you — your chipped front tooth, the Badlands’ glare — my dumb mind made up there.

Cindy Milwe Cindy Milwe lives with her family in Venice, California. She holds a BA from NYU, a Masters in English Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and an MFA in poetry from Bennington College. Her writing has appeared in 5 AM, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry East, and others. She has poems in two anthologies: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Changing Harm to Harmony: The Bullies and Bystanders Project.