Josh Moore Montana

Cheap ale pools in a Styrofoam cup. She’s barefoot in gravel, anklet flashing beneath the floodlamps. Pickup window ajar, radio blaring “Friends in Low Places.” Her jeans slung low, hips marbled violet on the porch-swing, ash winnowing across her thighs from last night’s guttering fire. I watch the buttes flatten at gloaming, a silo blinking red— a wound stitched into the earth. She speaks of leaving at firstlight. I say nothing, fingers tracing the stubs of dead cigarettes between her knuckles. Coyotes keen beyond the barbed-wire. The stars loom Pendulous We do not lift our gaze.