BOUDIN I FOUND IN A NEW MEXICO GHOST TOWN AS A WARHOL PAINTING

I didn’t expect to see it, set on red tiered shelves 
at the local grocery in Truth or Consequences, 
New Mexico as if it were a can of soup; but there 
it was, four times over and naming its place 
next to a lime green basket of wild raspberries, 
stuffed with spice and meat and onions so green 
they were almost blue—the rice I couldn’t quite 
see but I knew what tenderness the little sausage-
shaped casings held; wrapped in the most silvery 
of cellophanes, I ogled them until they seemed 
to be floating in air like quaint Cajun balloons, 
holding their space, ready for shindig and 
bon temps, filled to the brink of explosion. 

Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been included in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Qu, Redivider, Porter House Review, Salamander, Poet Lore, Mud Season Review, The Louisville Review, The Penn Review, Breakwater Review, Third Coast, RHINO, Sixth Finch, Gordon Square Review, Phoebe, Broad River Review, and Louisiana Literature.  Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). Hollie has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets. Most recently, her poem was selected as winner of the 22nd Annual Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize at CALYX and the 2022 Heartwood Poetry Prize. She was also a finalist in the Atlanta Review’s 2022 International Poetry Contest.