The yellow sun appears 
sudden, a direct, collect call 

from a desert motel room 
a lifetime of cities away. 

Outside, near the ruin 
of the abandoned power station  

three dead wolves dream, 
seething like the porcelain foam 

of weed flowers  
that grit and teethe their way  

out from the wild and wormed  
world below. 

Warped but beautiful,  
its miraculous night- 

like sleep. I am never not 
inside its menace and clamor  

the blonde fever 
of its death-like seep. 

Cynthia Cruz is the author of eight collection to poems, most recently Back to the Woods (Four Way Books, 2023), two works of cultural criticism, The Melancholia of Class, and Disquieting, and one novella, Steady Diet of Nothing. She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. In 2023, her collection Hotel Oblivion was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the European Graduate School where her research focuses on Hegel.