~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Larry D. Thomas

The Picker

(Las Cruces, New Mexico)

The sky on the eastern side

of the Organ Mountains

begins to color with the reddish

hues of a million blended salsas.

The picker faces the chiles

like a matador staring down

the bloodshot eyes of a bull. 

He readies his bucket,

dreaming of its brimming

with the shiny green fruit.

He dreams of its brimming

like the sixty-five bucketfuls

sure to follow, after which

he can stand, face the western sky,

and watch the same reddish

hues of morning bleeding

into the night, giving him

just enough time to catch

his breath and watch the eastern

sky behind the mountains

begin to color with the reddish

hues of a million blended salsas,

ushering in again the thousands

of shiny green hours ahead.

Larry D. Thomas, since November 2024, has published online two poetry chapbooks and three poetry pamphlets with OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), the most recent of which is Stories Begging Color (poems of ekphrasis) (Hot Button Press imprint). He has poems in the current or recent issues of the San Pedro River Review, Verse Daily, Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies, Valley Voices: A Literary Review, St. Austin Review, and Amethyst Review.