On In-Between Country by Alysse Kathleen McCanna
By Juan J. Morales
Hi, I’m Juan J. Morales, an assistant professor of English at Colorado College and a poet in Pueblo, Colorado, here for Poets on the Plains. Today I’m excited to share with you a poem by Alysse Kathleen McCanna, titled, “In-Between Country.”
Alysse teaches at Colorado Mountain College in the Vail Valley, and she has lived along the Colorado Front Range and Oklahoma, amongst other places in the past. This poem appears in Alysse’s book, Fish Wife, which was the winner of the 2025 Colorado Book Award, a collection that scrutinizes our relationships when they succeed and fail, and it also reconciles definitions, pressures, and defiances of wifehood and womanhood. There’s also some wonderful witchiness and magic in there too.
In “In-Between Country,” McCanna takes us on a cross-country move, a long drive that comes to a halt in a landlocked section of the United States, in this specific case, Oklahoma, thanks to a flat tire. In this paused instance, Alysse shows a life in a moment of transition and flux, a narrator afraid of losing her cats in the middle of nowhere and the hard work of changing a flat tire in unbearable heat.
The form is a haibun, which combines a blockhead of prose with a haiku to conclude, typically describing a geography. This particular spot appears desolate but still alive with overlooked nature and roadside relics. Her choice of using second person draws us further into the narrator’s mindset as the concluding haiku affirms the heat and roadkill as symbols of struggle and hearbreak left behind as we travel toward the excitedly scary next things ahead of us in our life.
In-Between Country
Pinch yourself: awake again, the car is moving, the two cats napping among the potted plants, untidy boxes. Your palms circle the peeling steering wheel, flakes of vinyl freckling your naked legs. You touch each sharp nick in the glass, trace each missing dial. The old car chugs on anyway. Hot air slips through the cracks like a quick, a thick slice of heat. The long drive bristles: a popped tire, goat head thorns sticking to your every edge as you spin the lug wrench, sweat. Musk thistles bloom roadside, bursts of purple on the thirsty plain. On the edge of the empty two-lane highway, you piss on the concrete as the cats stalk, careful, through the grass. They know not to wander too far. You know nothing. This is the in-between, flatlands empty but for gutted motels and lone hawks, circling, and you, cutting through it in your hot metal box like a thrash of thunder. Behind you: mountains, your heart in another person’s body. Ahead: latitude, prairie-grass pretty as desert sand.
In Oklahoma,
heat glistens; armadillo
roadkill waves you home.
In-Between Country used with permission.
Thank you for being with us for Poets on the Plains. I’m Juan J. Morales, coming to you from Pueblo, Colorado.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Juan J. Morales is the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Puerto Rican father and grew up in Colorado. He is the author of four poetry collections, including The Handyman’s Guide to End Times and his latest, Dream of the Bird Tattoo, published by the University of New Mexico Press. Recent poems have appeared in The Laurel Review, Breakbeats Vol. 4 LatiNEXT, Acentos Review, terrain.org, South Dakota Review, Sugar House Review, and Poetry. Morales has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Macondo, Longleaf Writers Conference, and he has served as the editor/publisher of Pilgrimage Press. He lives in Pueblo, Colorado and is an Assistant Professor of English at Colorado College. https://www.unmpress.com/9780826367587/dream-of-the-bird-tattoo/
FEATURED POET
Alysse Kathleen McCanna is the author of FishWife (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the 2025 Colorado Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, and other journals. Alysse holds a PhD in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA from Bennington College, and is an Associate Professor of English at Colorado Mountain College in the Vail Valley. https://www.alyssemccanna.com/
