Today’s Fabulous Visiting Writer Is…

July 12, 2024

0 Shares

Chelsea Dodds!

Chelsea Dodds is a high school English teacher living on the Connecticut shoreline. She earned her MFA in fiction from Southern Connecticut State University and her writing has recently been published in Poetry Super Highway, Rejection Letters, Sixfold Journal, and Maudlin House. Chelsea is currently working on a novel and a poetry collection, and when not writing, you can probably find her hiking. You can read her work at chelseadodds.com, or follow her on Instagram @chelseawanders_, or Twitter and TikTok at @chelseawrites_.

“Salinas,” was originally published in Poetry Super Highway in 2023.

Salinas

You turn on the hazard lights and park

halfway through the underpass,

giddy at how the California sun

illuminates your favorite mural in town and

we need to take a picture in front of it now.

Back on the road, we sing along

to Tame Impala while you text your ex

and point out funny license plates

I could maybe text my ex

if we were on better terms.

At lunch, you let me try your horchata.

I hold the cup to my lips and wait

to sip while you excitedly describe

that it tastes like the smell inside Pottery Barn,

and then we both laugh at the accuracy.

When our food arrives, we scoop grilled

cactus onto our plates and you can’t

stop smiling over everything new to you

on this trip and I can’t stop admiring how

you always find joy in the little things.

“Salinas is a vibe,” some friends say

before we travel out there, but I know

our adventures are different,

how we have no interest in the wineries

but we pluck grapes from roadside vineyards

and rush to wash down the sour taste.

How we search quaint neighborhoods

for estate sales we never find. How you park

in the street again to free a piece of prickly pear

and mail it home to New York, and I think

I could drive around aimlessly with you forever.

And in the evenings, when we retire

to the Best Western next to the McDonalds,

in separate but adjacent rooms,

I lie in my bed and listen through the wall

for signs you’re awake: a snippet

of phone conversation, the TV, but all

I hear is the hum of the AC and I wonder

if this is the closest I’ll ever get to falling

asleep next to you, always divided by walls

and state lines and past lovers who still hold

space in our hearts.

0 Shares