June 12, 2025: Cynthia Linville's "Joshua Tree National Park" (with accompanying photo)

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Cynthia Linville’s work has been published in numerous poetry anthologies and in her two books of collected poems, The Lost Thing and Out of Reach (both available from Cold River Press). She has received three mini-grants from Poets & Writers to perform in collaboration with musicians. Linville is also a photographer whose work has appeared in People’s Tribune, Sacramento News & Review, Capital Public Radio website, WTF, and more. She occasionally shows her photographs in Sacramento galleries. You can see more of her work at CynthiaLinville.com.


Joshua Tree National Park


I watch bees dance in the shade of this desert rock

where fingernails of the gods

have scratched blood-red lines

and I think about your scars.

I would like to learn you by touch.

I love the stillness here:

a place quiet enough to hear each other’s thoughts


but an obscure bird call teases us

a fragrance puzzles us

(sage mixed with desert thyme?)

and all I can think about is

the jalapeño slice you carefully quartered

and placed on my tongue

one bite at a time.


I want to climb inside your skin

curl up next to your heart

ride the slow-wave of blood

rushing in

rising without crest.

Somewhere the future has already happened –

I just don’t remember it yet.


© 2025 Cynthia Linville

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