In L. I. Henley’s Starshine Road, a collection set in the isolated, shifting Mojave Desert terrain of Joshua Tree, California, we are witness to the underside of a rural life near the world’s largest Marine Corps base juxtaposed with hundreds of miles of national park. Traversing a land that could not be more real, but which often feels like dreamscape, these poems explore the dangers and treasures of one’s birthplace: a dog and his homeless master, an infamous Amboy creosote, a junk pile, flawed cops, grieving mothers, and their wild, muscled, unpredictable boys. The junkyard appearing in several poems becomes a microcosm for the poet’s world – glittering, mysterious, and scrappy, something to be drawn to despite its raggedness. Part spirit quest, part inventory of what is loved and irrevocably lost to the elements, Henley evokes the exacting gaze of the desert in this stellar collection.
I wore a black cape & yellow skates
he wore a Kevlar vest
We did not know we were afraid
Occasionally my ear would pop
against my father’s gun-hip
bloom a silent red
When I hugged him
his gold star pressed cold against my cheek
He would see a pervert
squeeze my shoulder point like a hunting dog
at a man buying birthday candles
or lingering by the cheese
Twenty years on the same streets
& you just know
No one seemed to notice how our blue shadows
swept the aisles
& so we lived without her chose cans & boxes
that looked the most like food
Listen to “We Girls,” read by L. I. Henley:
Listen to “Starshine Road,” read by L. I. Henley: