Susan Doble Kaluza: “This poem is written as though Gabby were texting her mother from where she was left. As we know, her last text was thought not to be from her, and stated merely that there was no service in Yosemite. The poem is, of course, based on the information published, which collectively, through a 911 call and police bodycams, reveal both physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. When her body was identified and her death ruled a homicide, I wrote this poem as if she were writing about her own death and what she was feeling in the end. As a travel blogger, she loved in-depth descriptions, and outside of her blog, social media accounts, and texts to her mother she had no voice in what was happening to her. I believe, as I believe about all victims of domestic and partner abuse, that she was hiding the truth from her family—and is also common in abuse victims—protecting or shielding her abuser. I wrote this poem in the first person to draw close to her in a way that would help me feel what she felt in those last moments. The plants described in the poem are common in western states, including Wyoming, and not necessarily the ones that grow in the specific area where she was found. This poem is also a tool to bring much needed awareness to domestic and partner abuse.”
Susan Doble Kaluza: “I think I write for the kind of truths that poems give voice to, the kind that startle me about myself when I’m connecting thoughts with sounds, and vice versa. The English language is (I hope a worthy metaphor) an untapped oil well of riches that, through a very careful and personal arrangement of words, must be worked for, even won. It might even be an extended creation of one’s own being out of the sense that sounds make. When I’m working on a poem, when I don’t know what day or time it is, when I forget to eat, is when I’m happiest. In fact, often, in combination with my weekly runners’ highs, I’ve nearly collapsed from joy. When I finish a poem, when the whole thing rolls musically and effortlessly off my tongue, I sit back like I’ve just tunneled through the cells walls to another human oil well, and sometimes I cry.”
