If this state was a woman, you would love her,
Nebraska’s flaxen hair tucked neatly behind
her ears, flowing over her shoulders and down
the curve of her tanned back,
you would seek her eyes, fields of green
kissed with goldenrod and set in soft
earthy skin.

You would tell her how Kansas was flat,
Virginia too proper for you, and the Carolinas,
those thin-boned twins, all wrong,

but she, perfect. And you two would play,
you would catch her thick wrists
on a summer afternoon and dance
your way into fall, getting caught in the leaves
fluttering at her skirts,

and in the evening you would kiss her, drag
your lips across the stretching highways
of her belly, pausing to enjoy the night’s calm
along all the roads and capillaries
of her body.

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Monica Fuglei teaches at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Colorado. Her work has been recently published in Mason Street, Progenitor, and Caustic Frolic. Find her on Twitter: @MNFuglei