Joshua Dolezal is a native of the Pacific Northwest, an erstwhile wilderness ranger, and a visiting assistant professor of American literature at Central College. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Hudson Review, Gettysburg Review, Quarterly West, Seattle Review, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere.

His poems at Word Press
Natural Bridge literary journal

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Three Poems:

Geometric

Glacial basin swept clean
of all but grass, scattered birds—
view so plain it could be
the square root of the sum
of this body, this earth.

[from Isotope (2005)]

Someday Johnson Creek

            I have had this lesson,
            not to care for the bones.
                        —Hilda Raz

Late in a trail hitch, grown brown
with sun, solid with miles of climbs,
I drop my pack by an alpine stream,

cresting the ridge to watch for the others. 
Free of weight, my chest a wide house of sky,
these five hundred yards could be life after death—

an unending sprint with no need of rest. 

If bad luck lets me die in a house
instead of on bear grass, send the body
to school; let them learn what they can,

so long as they grind the remains
and spread them on these craggy peaks,
where the flies do their work with the sun.

[from Natural Bridge (2005)]

Sidewalk Romance

Her blouse hung open three buttons down,
a strand of hair clinging to her cheek
as she hustled through the crosswalk,
cell phone pressed to one ear, groping
with her free hand over a sky-blue rucksack.
He nearly stopped her just after she had passed
because the waft of lilac she left behind
must have been what she was missing.

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