West Mesa as Pantoum
Jude Marx
About the Author
Jude Marx was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and now resides in southern Maine. Their debut chapbook, The River the Night Remembers, winner of 2025 Maine Chapbook Contest, is forthcoming September 2026 through Pink Eraser Press. Jude is the winner of the 2024 Maine Trans Poetry Anthology Contest and 2025 Maine Literary Award for poetry. Their poems appear in New Words {Press}, Monster Beauties: A Maine Transgender Poetry Anthology, Neon & Smoke, and The Stonecoast Review.
Instagram: @j.elliem
Author Image by: Winky Lewis
Cover by: Farrinni
West Mesa as Pantoum
So I went back to the mesa
yellowed with flowers for just a few weeks
each spring. Sharp edge of volcanic rock,
purple-black and porous, dropped off to the city
yellowed with flowers for just a few weeks.
My home bled into soft dust.
Purple-black and porous, the city
spread to foothills of dusty mountains.
Bleeding into soft dust, I
walked barefoot through the landscape,
spread to foothills of dusty mountains.
I went back, went back, went back—
walked barefoot through the landscape
whose ghosts still haunted my feet
went back, went back, went back,
wild sage cracked on my shins.
But ghosts still haunted my feet,
so I made a ritual of the nettle’s sting
wild, cracked on my shins,
skeleton of choya crumbled in brown grass.
I made a ritual of silence’s sting
its sound a wild glory, stillness
memory’s skeleton crumbled in brown grass
searching for hawk, lizard, breath
sound a wild glory, stillness
in the ritual of return
memory in the brown grass
back to the mesa once more.