On a dark desert highway, there you stand.
There’s talk and it sounds so familiar:

He was a hard-headed man on the street,
She came from Providence with cool wind in her hair.

“Well baby.”

“Hey there, how are you?”

What kind of love have you got
When you’re out there on your own?

Source & Method: The poem is constructed from the opening lines from each song on the Eagles’ album ‘Hotel California’ and then mashed them together a little. I actually wrote the first draft of this 3 years ago, sent it to a friend, who liked it, and then did a grand total of nothing with it. I then rediscovered it today, had a tinker with it, and settled on its final structure.

Ross McCleary is from Edinburgh and is a poet, fiction writer, and podcaster. His work has recently appeared in Pop To, Structo, and Pushing Out The Boat. He co-edits podcast journal Lies, Dreaming as part of the Poetry as F*ck collective.