it’s why the summers
in Iowa
are so humid
Actually it draws water
up from the earth
passing wetness
weighing down
open air
I was drawn up
from the earth
but swamp (I wish
I didn’t have to claim
that) not prairie
Untouched prairie is
unfathomably rare
so much stripped
turned farm turned
CAFO
The stench of a CAFO
is also unfathomable
as in beyond imagining
death on the nose
But beyond the corn
and the pigs
is a swimming hole
Horses are there too
And it is 92 degrees
and Iowa humid
and I am laying
on a blanket
with this poem
Iowa also has a lot
of poems but maybe that’s
just my Iowa
my private collision
with land and sky
There is so much sky here
it unfurls in every direction
begging poetry
Everyone I know
has written a poem
on the sky
Today my poem
sits under
vast blue
and those white wispy
clouds that beg
for oil paint
Today we are swimming
And that big sky hangs
overhead air gold and thick
with early summer
And my poem calls across
murky cool water
calls to every Iowa poem Iowa
sky Iowa summer
with corn-heavy wind
Allya Yourish is from Portland, Oregon and currently living in Ames, Iowa. She has two cats that keep her heart filled with joy and a big bookcase that keeps her brain buzzing with poems. She was a nanny in Paris, France, a Fulbright grantee in Kuala Krau, Malaysia, a news assistant for the New York Times, and now she is getting her MFA in Creative Writing and the Environment from Iowa State University.