The Desert

THE DESERT

It was the Lord, our God, who brought us and our ancestors up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.—Joshua 24:17

You depart for the desert in darkness,

The way lit by the moon.

Rocks and scrub touched by chalk,

Brush lightly dusted white…

The planet is luminously radioactive.

Mountains cut out by scissors

Press black polygons against the sky.

Gradually, gloaming

Restores pink flush to the land,

Turning the moon into a faint watermark.

Noontime unsheathes his sword,

Slaying the day.

No animals peep in this slow broil,

Not a twitch of the ear,

Not a blink from a paralytic.

Traveling inside an oven, you wear a hat,

Swig ice water frozen the day before,

Keep delirium at bay like an anxious patient.

The wind lies in a coma.

Oxygen is too weak to rise.

Twilight is adding pigments to oil,

Deepening blue,

Doing arithmetic,

Red times orange.

Tiny denizens stir as if readying for school.

Dusk makes a promise:

He says the mountains hold deep wells and caves,

Cool as beds freshly made.

He speaks not to deceive but to encourage.

Waiting is a long walk to freedom, a motionless journey.

Originally published in Triggerfish Critical Review (December 26, 2014)

Sunrise, California Mojave Desert

I listen to broken grass...

I listen to broken grass…

I listen to broken grass

Dried out by summer

Popping underfoot like

Frozen grass in winter.

Originally published in Heron Tree (February 1, 2015)

Nose Park Hill, Alberta, Canada

2:00 AM

2:00 AM

No dogs bark at this hour,

Desolate, an abandoned field burnt by the sun,

Dry shaving curls on a workshop floor long unswept.

I hear a motorcycle roar along a distant road,

Harsher than the sound of sawing wood.

Then silence thickens like concrete putty sealing

Joints and crevices of a room

Gradually deafening to the slightest vibration.

The world is asleep, I am awake.

Passing time heaves, a resting animal.

Now is the moment to descend into stillness

Deep as darkness enfolding underground rivers,

Delicate as a tissue broken by a cough.

I am solitary as a metal tool

Seeking the warm grasp of a skillful hand.

Before the smallest beginning of a noise like a flint flake

Tears into the fabric of the night, I will take long draughts, cupping my hands

Descending as birds into the springs of tranquility.

Originally published in This Dark Matter (January 30, 2015)

Antique wall clock

Tag-Init

TAG-INIT

This time of year is a spear of broken grass, dryly curling like famine.

The wind droops, feverish. Tufts of old bread strewn about are picked at by hopping birds wielding knives.

High above, the sun wears a scorching beard, hair crackling, his puffy face, angry red.

Scornfully, the sky holds itself aloof, cerulean—the color of cruelty—unsullied by the gathering promise of rain.

Darkness rushes in at low tide of daylight. Black hordes silently clatter weapons.

Moonlight rises long and slender as a cold fish, flint head glinting in silvery water.

Momentary, this desert: a puff of dust exploded by a gusty fist.

 

Originally published in Eastlit (September 1, 2014)

High above, the sun wears a scorching beard...

The condor wheels...

The condor wheels…

The condor wheels,

Currents, warm, rise,

Noon pulsates,

Shadows entice,

Stillness, a wing,

Silence beats the air,

Dusk is solace,

Dawn, fair,

Day transforms,

The moon allures,

Clocks chime—brightly!

—love endures,

Time, a dragonfly,

Solitude, a dove,

I am solitude,

You are love.

Originally published in Boston Poetry Magazine (February 5, 2015)

I am solitude, you are love.

Your love is a meal we share…

Your love is a meal we share…

Your love is a meal we share, stopping as events blink by.

We are waiting trains, rushing travelers hop in and out.

Time slows, a luminous animal patrolling the depths.

We visit the bubble of an artisan polishing a vase.

Sitting down, transfixed by a moment of white jade,

We recall lolling on the sand as the outstretched arm

Of a comet flashed our future across a sable sky.

You sip my glass of wine, swirling it toward your lips.

I scoop toward you heaps of fresh rice steaming fragrant clouds.

We gaze at many dishes, teeming fields quilting a fertile valley.

Originally published in Blast Furnace, Volume 4, Issue 4 (December 14, 2014)

You sip my glass of wine...

Vigan

VIGAN

Let us go to the dry land where hundreds of years ago, tobacco leaves broad as parasols hung from the dark rafters of wooden sheds riddled by sunlit rapiers.

Let us visit the town, your hand in mine, touring the passage of time, nodding inwardly toward our own thoughts as if they were pedestrians, as the sun gradually sheathes his sword and dusk heavily casts a shadowy blanket.

Let us enter the house of old stone and weathered wood, greeted at the doorstep by sharp complaints of aching hinges and grousing floorboards, as in the fronting street tiny whirlwinds of dust and gravel and bits of leaves explode like fluttering insect wings.

Let us ascend the gleaming stairs, shuffle off our shoes, one after the other, lean forward above a window overlooking a wide boulevard lined with cobblestones hot as bread and, shutting our eyes to slowly turning fans of radiant heat, inhale sumptuously, our nostrils stung by cooked air like ground pepper.

Let us make our way to the window of the house in the town in the dry land where hundreds of years disappearing, hardy fields flourished like shining children of the day watered by the tireless sun. 

Originally published in Eastlit (December 1, 2014)

Also published in Vigan: the Telenovela (February 8, 2015)

Tampuhan (1895) by Juan Luna