no big thing.
just shit
happens.
it only took me
about twenty six years
to pull
that trigger.
I said,
listen, carnal,
you can drop me
anywhere along here—
I can walk home
from right here.
he wasn’t mad—he was laughing—he knew fear was funny / he
dug fear like some people dig laughter: oh, he dug laughter
too: he dug what you and I dig: he dug his daughter and
he dug his wife and he dug spring and he dug chocolate: he dug
his way out of prison didn’t he / he said
hey now, homeboy,
did I scare you?
don’t be like that.
I thought we were just talking
about poems.
OME
48 Roadsongs
Flashpoems: Driving I-10
I-25, I-40, I-70.
1.
Storm over the Rockies,
drop solo out of sawblade
clouds on I-70
mtns cut to
mesas
Buffalo Bill’s buried still
atop Lookout Mtn, but
grave’s gone into this tundra
of rain.
2.
Guy says: a mesa’s wider
than it is tall; a butte’s
• • •
taller than it is
wide. You
squeeze another 35 cents
unleaded into the tank.
3.
Gray thief fog
sneaks through Grand Junction,
tucks weedy lots
into its sack, even rabbits
feel safe
from the falcon.
4.
Last night
a cricket said
Neruda, Neruda, Neruda.
5.
Trucks
dive
into
snow
squalls:
• • •
pale
paler
gone.
6.
Winter wheat
stalks bend: red
bows fiddle sky.
7.
Crows
on that telephone line: restless necklace black laughing
pearls.
8.
Magpie
pecking a snowbank:
poemless page &
spilled inkwell.
9.
Green River.
• • •
Fog shreds
in wind:
a pine steps forward,
and another.
10.
rust
car wreck
rattlegrass
clover
burrheads
dog bones
bottleglass
lizard
here’s a poem:
pumpjacks.
11.
Stormclouds
upside down
Alps
rain drops
little Bavarians
climbing to the dirt.
12.
Words left on walls:
spider with a mountain skin
skin is always a monster
snake rainbow
take wing tiny baby
13.
Midnight.
Her nipple
hides
the volcano.
14.
Billboards in this storm
advertise sorrow.
15.
Pickup trucks in snowstorms
amass gradual loads of white
haul winter 99 miles.
16.
Beau Jocque
and the Zydeco High Rollers
Caifanes
Wall of Voodoo
Concrete Blonde
Café Tacuba
Catherine Wheel
Love and Rockets
Maldita Vecindad
Lila Downs Tonantzin
17.
She next morning still
blooming on his fingers.
18.
Car cuts down the ramps colliding
head-on with each tomorrow: no
where in particular, man, you say
in the diner, just going
19.
anywhere, America, just going,
you know?
20.
one raindrop somersaults a butterfly
21.
Crows shit
into the Grand Canyon
nature lovers
22.
deer freeze
• • •
car radio
passes
23.
A wedge of crying geese
rusts
in empty sky.
24.
October
signifying
October
25.
Glove caught in roadside tree
waves to pilgrims
who’ll not return.
26.
coffee in a Kansas gas station
the wind
big rigs
nude magazines
looking everywhere for home
27.
Snaketown, Twilight Zone, Kansas. Old building behind a gas
station. “6
Legged Steer” Alive! “5 Legged Cow.” Dead cars and wrecks
parked in
weeds across the front to lure wanderers in: looks like ghosts
of Interstate
midnight pulled up to spend $5 on the rattlesnake pits, the
mutant animal
zoo. Oakley, Kansas ground to powder by scudding black
pumice of
clouds. Wooden pits with chicken wire roofs give up the smell
of rattles,
snakes, skin, snakeshit, dead mice, poison. The man at the
counter bangs
on the wire: panicked sizzle of rattles rising, behind him
rattlesnake heads,
snake skin belts, snake teeth, snake head baseball caps,
snakeskull belt buckles.
Out back, 6 legged steers, coyotes dreaming of the prairie,
badgers pacing
concrete. Tornadoes vector in on us, and the man behind
the counter
tells us these jokes: Yesterday we had a baby snake that broke
out crying.
Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo. You know why? ’Cause he broke
28.
his rattle! Hey!
It’s Saturday. Do you know
what cows do
around here on Saturday
nights? Go
to the moo-
vies!
29.
her legs converge twin stems shadowed lily
30.
Snow
31.
If I remain
still,
I can taste
her breast.
So strange
her texture
creams my
tongue.
32.
Eyegames or Old Age:
LUBE
OIL &
TUNEUP
• • •
becomes, in rainy light:
LIVE
GILA
MONSTER
33.
Despairing of God, I came to the desert seeking saints.
The tongue of the tribe sleeping in my family
whispers spiny songs: chumampaco_/ place where they killed
the dogs: huirives_/ bird: bacochibampo / the water of the
serpents: bajeribampo_/ the water of the lizards: cuirimpo_/
the place of the drummers.
The freeway is the phrasebook
of the dreamers:
I will write—giostebareme.
Sing me
a song—nech-che-biu-graia.
The sun is coming out—apo-po a-liey-ya.
Delépane. Good-bye.
34.
Good-bye.
35.
America’s a page
of Kerouac: disjointed dharma poems in the brain
unspooling highways, paper rolls/black ink
black light/black coffee and doughnuts/black
berry jam on yer toast, honey/black sabbath
black magic/slap the black off you/black
eyed susans flouncing in ditches from here
to the Black Hills of sleeping South
Dakota, Crazy
Horse mtn flexing up
from the pine shadows, arm raised
into the sunrise as if the ghosts
of the tribes could rise: wheels
clickclack the fast lane like keys
of a wasted Underwood out of date
but typing, haunted, weeds fingering
the letters in a junkyard, some kind of
haiku: AM radio
sings its toilet paper hymns—cigarettes,
hamburgers, sports at ten till the hour,
conspiracies. Today
was tomorrow
yesterday. Today
was tomorrow
yesterday.
36.
Loneliness
family far off
rainstorm
37.
My breath
throws clouds
down the road:
I follow.
38.
sips coffee in that window:
lone woman at sunrise
39.
while mockingbird
insults
the dawn
40.
white lingerie on the clothesline nets my desire like a fish
41.
r/n/d/r/p/s
42.
she lets down her hair. waterfall
43.
All summer
she brought me
meadows in
her skirt.
44.
Roadkill
armadillo:
• • •
ants load up, scurry
dismantling armor
mechanic chefs cart snippets
in a dilly.
45.
Earth asleep, winter
comes: snowflakes:
10 million closing eyelids.
46.
4 in the morning
and the Marlboro man’s still smoking
by the dead gas pumps,
thirty foot sign
lights like comets
burning over his head.
47.
red Mustang
neon
sunflowers
Stuckey’s
trading post
corn
here’s a poem:
• • •
pumpjacks
nod me home.
48.
Delépane.
Ama-ni-huella, Dios tata itom Jicori.
Delépane,
delépane,
delépane.
Gone.
Sonoran Desert Sutras
(Selected Notes on Writing The Hummingbird’s Daughter / Queen of America in the Arizona Desert.)
For Brian Andrew Laird
Despairing of God
I went to the desert
to seek my own saint.
#
She had no poems—
I learned alone to sing out
our summer sorrows.
#
Haunted adobe—
candelabra’s melting stubs
wax that fell was black.
#
If I went downstairs,
heard kitchen racket overhead—
nobody else there.
#
Disembodied hand
tarantula-crawled across
white sheet to my face.
#
Medicine woman
cooking her green tamales
held me when I wept.
#
Beer with Chuck Bowden.
Three o’clock coffee with Laird.
Writers at The Cup.
#
Sunset desert hikes
meeting javelina gods
white roadrunner guide.
#
In the old archive
librarian grabbed my hands
and cried, “Please heal me!”
#
Drove Ed Abbey’s car
no muffler up to Denver—
ghost in Cadillac.
#
Someone set a fire
and tried to burn our house down
slit apart the bed.
#
on the tortillas
in the refrigerator—
one dead rattlesnake.
#
men target shooting
at fake clay pigeon CDs—
Front 242.
#
The medicine man
said, “I will give you a dream”—
gave me green rock: dreams.
#
Teresita came
walking from the other side,
brought me white flowers.
#
San Xavier del Bac
lit Teresita candles
hillside holy hours.
#
Three a.m. hiking
in the desert with women
who laughed in the dark.
#
Watching the comet
at the end of the highway
her hip cocked on mine.
#
No, don’t speak his name!
I heard the Knocker Angel
pounding on my door.
#
So many devils
unleashed by the medicine
I slept with a knife.
#
My teacher took me
to ask questions of the plants—
I felt like a child.
#
Halloween midnight
one wrecked car blocking the road—
single human leg.
#
One box Minute Rice—
one old cat, half deaf, half blind—
abandoned to trust.
#
Yaqui funeral—
old man in his black coffin
colder than the moon.
#
First monsoon morning—
I finally saw miracles—
frogs leaped from the ground.
#
Female medium
insisted spirits told her—
I signed questionnaire.
#
Tinajas Altas—
couldn’t find any water,
someone left a can.
#
After the car wreck
100 trucks drove over
the children’s clothing.
#
At old copper mine
pondering the day’s lessons
coyotes stalked me.
#
The angry scholar
called to threaten a lawsuit
if I wrote the book.
#
She said we were twins
separated in heaven—
did I want to party?
#
The Hotel Congress
was still a holy vortex—
Dillinger slept there.
#
Down in Mexico
the curanderas fed me
bowls of green Jell-O.
#
Teresita’s niece
wakes up on certain mornings
floating in the air.
#
Standing in graveyards
in Clifton, Arizona—
thought I might find her.
#
“I’m their worst nightmare!”
he
said in his adobe—
“Liberal with guns!”
#
Medicine woman
said she missed grandmother’s ghost
since it left with me.
#
The saint’s grand-daughter
heals families in Phoenix—
danced for Dean Martin.
#
Holy woman said,
“In heaven you’ll have a job!”
shaking her finger.
#
When down to nothing
the spirits bring miracles—
one dollar Whopper.
#
Hiking Sheep Pen trail
vulture flew up behind me—
my shadow grew wings.
#
Mostly it was work
alone on old computer—
Nine Inch Nails all night.
#
I learned something there
From the Saint of Cabora—
Every day’s sacred.
YEI
Teocalli Blues
For Santino Rivera
Dangling from this desvelada,
angling along this workday flojera,
navigating dawn-wet streets
brainwash myself again:
rain washed heaven’s scent
down the sidewalk grates,
no smoke from the copal—
orale vato—got those Levi’s apretaditos