it’s light at ten in Arizona.
the stars press through the air so dusty that it swells.
cicadal murmurs hum, the rhythms cool farewells
’til the heat retreats, sheds us worn out shells.

 

the moon escapes, a pale corona.
we lie, peculiar, at the angle of repose.
our words fall out, less humble than the snows
that melt before they slake the dirt in its hellish, fissured throes.

 

this is America.
this light a poor man’s light.
this star a satellite
this dust a parasite.

it’s as poetic as it seems
but nowhere near as picturesque.

 

these words, reflections of reality, wink back, grotesque.
these cicadas die and cry their deaths aloud.
these heats asphyxiate, our skin a sun-crunched shroud.
these shells stand, frozen, our thoughts endure, unbowed.

 

Nogales and Nogales, though sweethearts, fight.
our mothers stop and gape, moonshadowed in the night
our bodies sprawl apart, our hands clenched through the fence
we cannot scale, though it should be our right.

 

this is América.
this ángulo too small.
this heat a bitter wall.
this earth swallows us all

 

no matter what we say we lie
here, hypocrites, our apple pie
a sapped cliché, each welcome dry,
dry like the dust that chokes our eye.

 

why is it light at ten in Arizona
while our lovers we ink-in, indict.
we persist, blind kings, despite
all these words we liers write.

 

 

 

 

 

featured in Borderscape, 2012