Cindy Bousquet Harris

No Parking in the Fire Lane

Mojave squirms

in a vise of heat,

posturing,

turns cold-shouldered

from the moon,                                                             

shudders with hollow

storms, abandoned

trucks, boot prints

almost visible —

no crowd tonight

to catch the beat,

smell the jazz

cling and sway

in murky loud,

shimmy down

to the dry-ache                                                                                   

screaming sand.

There's a Disconnect Here

between what you said and the way

sun streams through a slatted window,

heat inching up,

between how I feel

and the background music,

don’t you get it and why should you,

crust and pillow,

question and scar,  

pity and a long walk home.

Cindy Bousquet Harris is a poet and a licensed marriage and family therapist. Her poems are online and in print journals, including Indiana Voice Journal, Snapdragon, Eclectica, and Blue Heron Review. Cindy’s had the pleasure of giving poetry readings at the Claremont Library, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, and at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, CA. She lives in southern California with her husband and children.