INTERIM
Laura Madeline Wiseman

Visualize we arrive here with every island
of the world behind us: glorious blue  

surf, cloud whiffles, and palm trees broad
and full with perpetual summer, dune grass

and beaches open to bicycles. If we didn’t travel through it,
it would be unlikely we’d have ever reached this space.

How necessary to search the sand by two-wheels, to ride
daily in the motion of miles from ocean to ocean—  

evidence that makes myth into an interpretable history.
The nomadic independence is ours, that need

to pack up and go, to discover elsewhere, to live
in wonder of what’s ahead. Next year, let’s journey

to another nowhere, pole to pole, or elevation gain
of mountains to below sea level, let another story

catch us mid-making. We might be rich or eking along,
sick with what we can’t name or well, but we’ll find it

—weathered monuments of granite, ancient words
that place with old mysteries—at the end of the ride.

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Laura Madeline Wiseman's book Velocipede, published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press, is a 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist. Her book Leaves of Absence: An Illustrated Guide to Common Garden Affection with artist Sally Deskins published by Red Dashboard, is an Honor Book for the 2017 Nebraska Book Award. She is the editor of the anthology Bared: Contemporary Poetry and Art on Bras and Breasts published by Les Femmes Folles Books. Her recent book is Through a Certain Forest published by BlazeVOX [books].