I WON’T BE SAVED

By Reb Cuevas


Photography: VisitUtah.com

I would imagine myself submerged
in the ghost of Lake Bonneville —
knob-kneed child of Orem, Utah,
hungry for colorful facts about the world:

If all of SL County were a mile-deep pool, it still wouldn’t hold as much water as buried this place 13,000 years ago. A pluvial lake, Bonneville hoarded rainwater like 2020 toilet paper, like privilege. Until the breaking of an alluvial fan-dam; until the draining away that took a year.

I am pluvial too,
accumulating like sin,
in need of cleansing.

But I won’t be saved
if it means by god
of a white man’s need to be
the most special — my (s)kin a curse.

No, I’d rather be cured in Bonneville salt,
a part of me dried up, the rest escaping.


Reb Cuevas’ work has been featured in the queer-lit journal peculiar. Her essay “When the Ground Shakes” and poem “jicama” appear in the Torrey House Press anthology “Blossom as the Cliffrose: Mormon Legacies and the Beckoning Wild.”