Traci Brimhall, who lives and works in Manhattan, is the 2023–2026 poet laureate of Kansas. She is the author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod, Saudade, Our Lady of the Ruins, and Rookery. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, New England Review, Ploughshares, Orion The Believer, The Nation, New Republic and New York Times Magazine.
Do not fall for it, dear heart. The glimmerof the horizon is an ending, not a promiseof gilt bells hanging from trees. Do not fall
for the morbid gold of tombs. Do not buythe myth and wander into the gilded fieldshunting for a lost city. Don’t become the next
Coronado. The road to Quivira is a road madeof bones. Some fantasies can make you cruel.Dear heart, you’re a cathedral…