Driving Past Lettuce Fields on Highway 101
A freeway is a dream
where we move like
magic beings, too fast
to see the implications
of lettuce rows, the
men bent double,
knives out. Eyes on
the road, we lose
ourselves counting
signs, happy at
small diversions:
tumbling litter or
glass shards sizzling
in the sun. And if
the stink of fertilizer
blasts our bubble, we
step on the gas, keep
our gazes high above
the men lifting heads
from the ground
and tossing them onto
the back of the truck
they walk behind,
that never stops moving.
Erica Goss is the winner of the 2019 Zocalo Poetry Prize. Her collection, Night Court, won the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Recent and upcoming publications include Creative Nonfiction, North Dakota Quarterly, Spillway, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, Slant, The Sunlight Press, The Pedestal, San Pedro River Review, and Critical Read. Erica served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA, from 2013-2016. She edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones.