Consolation
Natalie Padilla Young | Poetry
Will you get the wallet from the car? I want to buy dinosaur poo.
—Tourist, Moqui Cave, Utah
It’s petrified. Maybe
that’s obvious
because it’s a dinosaur’s. After all
it’s still here
now available for purchase. Can it be
put on display? Placed in the bathroom
next to candle and matches.
Always
a flame to cover
hints of destruction. With the first dog
you send flowers. What should you send
for the second who passes
only weeks later
on Christmas Eve? Another bouquet
doesn’t seem right. A prehistoric leftover—
can that be
the present? Polished smooth
by tumble
and years. Always alert to our own leaks,
blotting
for blood—relieved when it comes back
clean, endlessly surprised
when it doesn’t. Everything leaves
something
behind, no matter the care
taken. Covered in a perfect angle
of light, caught
in the camera frame, a fallen tree
looks just right,
if you weren’t around to hear it come down.
Natalie Padilla Young co-founded and manages the poetry magazine Sugar House Review. She is half Puerto Rican and half Brigham Young, working as an art director for a Salt Lake City ad agency. Her first book All of This Was Once Under Water is out from Quarter Press (2023). Natalie’s poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Tampa Review, Rattle, South Dakota Review, Los Angeles Times, Tar River Poetry, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. She serves on the Utah Arts Advisory and Lightscatter Press boards, and lives in southern Utah with the poet Nano Taggart and two dogs. NatalieYoungArts.com