The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Welcome to Midland by Logen Cure

This selection, chosen by managing editor Krista Cox, is from Welcome to Midland by Logen Cure (Deep Vellum 2021).

Permian Sea

My father told me
once all this desert was vast inland sea:
all mollusks and trilobites,
amphibians bigger than my imagination.
He pointed westward,
explained the Guadalupe Mountains
are an enormous ancient reef.
All this, he said,
everything was water.

Then the sea stagnated,
temperature skyrocketed,
acid rained from the sky,
everything died:
the most massive extinction
in recorded history.
All those fossils,
oil now. Of course.

I was born here,
to the pasture,
spiny mesquites,
cracked red earth.
I imagined being born underwater,
born a suggestion
of what’s to come,
something so basic
it could survive
when earth starts over,
a nautilus, maybe,
all tentacles, no memory.

I dreamed of it, the sea
before its horrific death,
before millions of years
sun blazed over lifeless desert.
Sometimes, waking I thought
I heard the waves.

Logen Cure is a queer poet and educator. She curates Inner Moonlight, the monthly reading series and podcast at The Wild Detectives in Dallas. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Welcome to Midland (Deep Vellum Publishing), was shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Awards. Learn more at www.logencure.com.

Krista Cox is the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications, The Wardrobe, and Doubleback Review. She’s a poet and editor and currently pursuing her master’s in clinical mental health counseling. Mostly, like everyone, she’s just trying to stay hydrated while she fights the system.