swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

the secrets of lake mead
Yvonne Higgins Leach

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The Secrets of Lake Mead

Drought-stricken, mud-drenched, receding,
Lake Mead. Sandbars emerge like
etched white ghosts in the land’s eaves.

Uncovered islands jut their hunched backs
to dry as the sun announces its whereabouts.
Land exposed below the bathtub ring

means we are no longer innocent.
Uncloaked is a rust-ridden boat from World War II.
Decades-old trash shudders in the damp-free air.

The Melvin sisters on their paddleboards,
in search of a beaver dam, find
femurs among the harrowed reeds.

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Yvonne Higgins Leach work has appeared in Cimarron Review, decomP Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, The MacGuffin, Midwest Quarterly, Pink Panther Magazine, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Virginia Normal, Wisconsin Review, and Whitefish Review, among others. I earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Poetry from Eastern Washington University. Her first collection of poems, Another Autumn, was published in 2014 by WordTech Editions.