Robbi NesterIn Inland Empire, Poetry, Volume II Issue 2 on August 22, 2012 at 3:26 pm

Southern California Apocalypse

In the meadows of the Republic
there are no moles. Their burrows,
corked with plugs of clay, lie empty.
Once, with the blind certainty of saints,
they’d navigate their native element,
an unzoned metropolis of tunnels, every
entrance with a back way out.
Now, tollroads flap like flypaper
under the bare-bulb sun.
The tame hills, furrowed with faults,
shake their broad brown shanks
and shudder to their knees.

—-

Robbi Nester is the author of a chapbook, Balance. She has published poetry previously in Inlandia, Poemeleon, Northern Liberties Review, Qarrtsiluni, Floyd County Moonshine, Victorian Violet Press, and Caesura. She also has a poem forthcoming inJenny. She has published reviews in Switchback and The Hollins Critic, and her essays have been anthologized in Easy to Love but Hard to Raise (DRT Press, 2011) andFlashlight Memories (Silver Boomer Press, 2011).