Holly Wotherspoon
Invisible City
Sand swallowed up everything
the plaza where betrayals hung
in the heat all the way to the rotting adobe
where we sweated together
on a too-small mattress
one of us always on top of the other
roof tiles fell without warning
babies never ceased crying for their mothers
even as their mothers carried them in their arms.
We ached inside for those sobbing babies
sores that wouldn't scab. In Playa del Sol
we mixed our cocktails with bottled water
our sweat dripped down onto the cool tile
outside of town, beyond the desert, beyond
the sandy drifts smothering everything
was the sea
Bio
Holly Wotherspoon is a writer of poems, and, previously, articles and training materials for the legal profession. Her poems have appeared in San Francisco Peace and Hope 2016 Anthology, Pioneertown Literary Journal, River Poets Journal, Blue Bonnet Review, Unbroken, Mulberry Fork Review, Cake and Grapes, and other fine publications. A third generation Californian by way of three decades in the Pacific Northwest, she lives on a hill in Sonoma County, California.