Thursday, August 7, 2025: Michael Dwayne Smith's "Do You Remember the Last Stars of Visalia?"

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Michael Dwayne Smith is the author of five books, including a forthcoming poetry collection, Shaking Music from the Angry Air (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, September 2025); his work haunts many literary houses, including Heavy Feather Review, ONE ART, Third Wednesday, New World Writing Quarterly, decomP, Heron Tree, Gargoyle, Monkeybicycle, and Star 82 Review. He's a recipient of the Hinderaker Poetry Prize, the Polonsky Prize for fiction, and several Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net nominations. He lives near a Mojave Desert ghost town with his family, rescued horses, and Calamity the California calico cat.



Do You Remember the Last Stars of Visalia?


We took a Greyhound up Route 99, chugging through

San Joaquin Valley, the day overtaken with haze

and drizzle, past lingering rolls of farmland, graffitied

bridges, little Tipton’s railroad ghosts, knots of trees


tied to the Tule Rivers, through Tulare, small fieldhand

towns dotted with pickups and boots and cantinas, us

chatting up the driver, a doctoral-dropout revolutionary

who flirted with you using stolen quotes by Neruda and


Paz—could you tell then I was in love with you—sky

finally clearing in Visalia, as the sun washed out behind

a Venice Hills horizon. We checked in, found a bar,

laughed at a crack you made about a Diane Wakoski


poem, lines where she says something like, “I’m gonna

dance on your grave, old man,” him “stepping on

her shadow once too often,” and I knew you were

talking about me. When we meandered back to the hotel,


I thought of Levis, in Winter Stars, how “in California,

light is closer,” but I’m getting those lines wrong, I told

myself, then we went upstairs, undressed in silence,

spent the last of the best of us in a settled rental bed.


© Michael Dwayne Smith

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