What If the Invader Is Beautiful

Louise Mathias

In the tallgrass
where all gold starts

wind became
my additional lover.

His hand the inflorescence
one finger partially gone—

Lovegrass/
Panicgrass/
Witchgrass./

I carefully researched
how to bait my trap.

Took the small blonde charmer
out of town.

Stealer of cholla,
eater of sun murdered plants.

I knew it would die coming back.

Ajo lilies
now up to my waist.

What blackened
the opal knowledge—

What his ghost finger traced.

Louise Mathias is the author of The Traps (Four Way Books, 2013).

About Louise Mathias

Themes

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Nature

About this Poem

“Across two vast, golden landscapes, that of the Kansas Tallgrass Prairie, and that of the Mojave Desert (where any form of human presence feels like an invasion itself) the poem’s title is a reference to the invasive tamarisk tree, which drips with dense masses of pink flowers, even as it threatens the delicate ecology of the area with its terrible alien thirst.”
—Louise Mathias

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Larrea

Moved the jackrabbit
from the road, laid her under
a bush. Land of little

shade, we do what we can.

One sport is crying while driving.
Another the daffodil light.

All the mornings I’ve found you,
been found.

I’m just eating a sandwich with Sarah,
when the wind picks up, and her hair

becomes another,

crucial, planet. Night running off
with itself. Away

from your star. So soft
is the fur

of the currently—

Louise Mathias

2016

The Problem of Hands

And how to fill them 
is the problem of cigarettes and paint.  

First time I felt my undoing 
was in front of 

a painting—Sam Francis, I believe.  

Oh, his bloomed out, Xanax-ed California.

I liked the word guard, but you know

we made each other
nervous, standing too close

for everyone concerned. All art being 

a form of violence
as a peony 
is violence. 

Here you come

with your open hands.

Louise Mathias

2013

Quandary

All night I flew the dark recess of God’s mind.
It was arranged like Iowa fields—

not a damn thing missing.
You ask how I survived.

I lived on a message, broad light
at the end of the world.

Words, they have so much in common with departure,

the clouds elliptical & nervous.
Why translate? It’s just a revolving door.

“Chill wind” has seven
components. One is loss.

Louise Mathias

2004

Poems

What If the Invader Is Beautiful

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Larrea

The Problem of Hands

Quandary

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What If the Invader Is Beautiful

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