Today's poem is by Natasha Sajé

Dear Utah,
       

State in which I have lived longer
than any other, state of my discontent.
Horace said skies change,
souls don't, although like most,
I blame anything but myself.
You are the place where I moved for work
and the place I've complained about
for one-third of my life,
the locus I'm trapped in—
an aging otter in an arid zoo.
You are my theremin—vibrations
and tremors I feel without touch.
Sometimes a fly-over sense
of being left alone, even though
the bank teller calls me by my first name.
We Utahns wear jeans to the symphony
and use family as an excuse
for not showing up. We drive streets wider
than highways while the "blessed"
call the shots, where one in five
carries a gun. I roll my eyes at special
rings and garments that mark
me as having no ward. You are the state
I must explain: watery beer
or restaurants near schools without liquor.
You are also the state where I'm never
lost: your mountains close—gray rock in summer,
whiter in winter, green in May before drought—
tell me where and when I am,
along with the copper mine seen
from space, the salt lake too shallow
to swim, the townhouses jammed into
crevices of valley like aphids on a leaf.
Humans are edged by wilderness
where elk, coyotes, moose, and mountain lions—
and no mosquitos! no mold!—roam.
O Utah, you're a kinky rectangle and I'm a pear
wasted on a December tree.
We're both queer as cupcakes except you
pretend you're white bread.

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Copyright © 2023 Natasha Sajé All rights reserved
from The Future Will Call You Something Else
Tupelo Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission