Talavera Sunsets, by James Duncan

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

More than a road trip, it became a pilgrimage and last goodbye. The poems in Talavera Sunsets serve as mile markers along dusty highways in west Texas, archiving James Duncan’s final teenage road trip with his father and sister in the 1990s before impending adulthood swept them all in different directions.

From motels in Del Rio and Alpine to old cavalry forts and the McDonald Observatory north of Big Bend, these poems explore the people, places, and magical landscapes of a region as old as time, yet always in flux with humanity’s never-ending migrations. The three of them never returned, and part of them never left.

James Duncan has divided his life between Texas and New York, traveling back and forth over the years as if stitching a wound that will never fully heal. He has written about each place in Both Ways Home, Tributaries, Cistern Latitudes, Vacancy, and We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, among other books of poetry and fiction. He edits Hobo Camp Review and travels as widely as he can to write about indie bookstores for his blog, The Bookshop Hunter. Find him on the road or at jameshduncan.com.