by Lara Hamidi-Ismert

Fridays I drive west on Quincy—
a fox avoiding its foxhole—

to the wheat fields, away from
someone else’s bed, the sweet

mildew of beer-rotting floors.
I lie on my back in the weeds,

itchy, cold, alone, and let only
the stalks graze me. Out here

the obtrusive city light is hushed
by the dark. I see meteors streak

the sky far more often than my
mother ever confessed they do,

and she never warned of the cry
a mountain lion makes when

it’s crouched low in the grasses
of southeastern Kansas, like

a baby left on a gravel road—
confused, hungry, beckoning.

______________________________________________________________________

Lara Hamidi-Ismert is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. Her poetry appears in Caustic Frolic, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and Tether's End Magazine. She has also published articles on the mathematics related to quantum mechanics in Communications in Mathematical Physics and New York Journal of Math. Lara earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Nebraska after earning a BA in creative writing and a BS in mathematics from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. When she’s not mathing, she writes poetry and short fiction, acts in theatre productions, hikes with her husband, and scoops her four cats’ litter boxes.