Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb, About Do Not Feed Signs

Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb

About Do Not Feed Signs

Okay—they are wildlife, but they know us so well; long after the signs have fallen and humans are not around in Yellowstone, these ravens will be here, and their generations to come with blood-red gapes beckoning, squawk-screaming, wings flapping, begging for morsels, more bits of bread, cookies, crackers, whatever we all fed them illegally because their eyes and cries were irresistible, and our deep inclination could not be overridden even when forbidden.

Rising above geysers, engulfed by fog forming on the lake— serene and steamy, the dark and dreamy, sharp gaze of ravens will still gleam with intent to glean as the young continue to follow from stones that once defined a now vacant parking area to the other side of the road, where they will drift in and out of holes across in crumbling cliffs to share with their parents the eggs of hysterical swallows.

Driving in the Down-Drift

The mountains are disappearing as the wind’s white, wispy breath floats through ghostly trees, and Idaho flat-land fields, once green, greet the heated horizon in the rearview mirror.

We still hope to see blue sky possibly today somewhere up there ahead, maybe Utah, in the widening ash-filled cloak.

Fire fighters are flooding in from Canada. California, Montana, and Washington State have burning problems of their own.

And water—the damn water in the automatic faucet at the rest area won’t turn on, the karmic balance favoring fierce needs over the frivolous. Boundaries in the West are hazy, but we should be safe in the southern highland desert of Arizona—our home blackened to nothing two years ago.

With nineteen hotshots sacrificed back then, the controlled burns now never seem to end. Hopefully, God keeps track of the smoke as it rises dreadfully to heaven with the withering West’s descent into Hell.

Exercising on the Road

Where beige hills slope into a subtle V shape, soft and subtle wheatgrass almost hides her, an antelope resting quietly in the brush, legs tucked under, gold and white face graced by deep eyes, dark and watching the oval, red cinder track at the edge of town; I see her as I kick up dust, running nowhere over another meter marker and wonder if she is as bored as I am.

Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College. In addition to Weber, her work has appeared in Eastern Iowa Review, Watershed Review, Terrain, Sierra Nevada Review, Kudzu House Quarterly, Concho River Review, Midwest Quarterly, the anthology Talking Back and Looking Forward (Rowman & Littlefield), The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press), and other journals and anthologies. Her poetry has received both Pushcart Prize and Sundress Best of the Net nominations. She is co-founder of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Native West Press.