SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MILAN AND GALLUP
Hakim Bellamy
Here,
the horizon is open
to interpretation.
An intergalactic dateline
Between New Mexico
and anywhere else.
Where the sun catwalks
the thin line between today
and tomorrow.
A moment of beauty that is also an S.O.S.
A smoke signal. A cry for help.
Begging perfection
to wait.
Damming the inevitable progression
of time.
Barely held together by a steering wheel
enveloped by clenched palms.
White knuckled and painfully aware that even miracles
have an expiration date.
As the moon now illuminates the runway between yesterday
and the rest of our lives,
she takes her rightful place at the new center
of the universe.
The us
we perpetually aim to find
somewhere out there.
Here,
the horizon is still
open
to imagination.
Hakim Bellamy is the inaugural Albuquerque poet laureate (2012–2014) and a national and regional slam poetry champion.
The is a multiplicity of voices reflecting the complexity and layers of culture, history, spirituality, and poetic expression that is uniquely Nuevo México. Like the voices filling post office lobbies and general stores, and in the resolanas of our childhood homes of Dixon and Deming, the voices gathered here form a community. No one voice is more important than another. You will find published poets alongside your next-door neighbors, census workers, poets laureate, teachers, senators, high school students, professors, healthcare workers, doctors, and spoken-word artists, all revealing something of themselves that can only be felt through poetry. And, oh, how we
