107. my aunts

.

my aunts look like my

mother as they age, lovely

eyes and smiles that blow

.

all the fuses. their blood

pulses coal and tin, mining stock

and a ranch’s stench of branding.

weaned on books, canning, breaking 

.

colts and madness, social 

justice shot a rich seam 

through the bedrock of young

.

minds – young with shame, resentment

laid down to either side, thin

but persistent lodes

.

through each sister.

how alive two are yet, how 

men stunted them all,

.

the girls. now they fade.

they stare out across dry lawns,

all the colts broken

.

and we cousins sigh,

softly and half lost like the ranch

left fallow for our

winter.

77. Wide Clean Valleys

Jacked up on old fantasies 

of fierce men with guns

and fists tough enough to take out

Spaniards hissing at my long hair

and Mexicans, Italians touching

my breasts on streetcars

I’ve got this cowboy 

combing my hair.

For now all the borders are safe,

home on the range.

.

Back in the north in the winds

in the late spring blizzards freezing calves

still slick with the snot of birth

I may sculpt dreams differently.

His moustache might tickle,

or crystals in the mountain

could direct spirits to spin

tighter casings around my heart,

kicking the handyman loose.

.

In preparation I savor moments

like single pomegranate seeds

bursting sweet across my tongue.

I gather him to me and feed us both

on tender moves, animal lust, 

creosote blossoms and 

wide, 

wide

clean valleys.

.

73. Tiptoe

Watching him while

he sleeps I

steep myself in the 

tea color of his

skin

vanish in fragile

lashes

hopeless against his

cheek, reappear

stroking long hair off 

a temple

with one of my small fingers.

I memorize the

unusual curve of 

a hip

heft of his dark

testicles

resting promise of

his quiescent 

cock curled

softly.

His sturdy shoulder his

brawny arm draped warm over

me sheltering my 

delicate ribs.

With my weightless

vision I cherish my

lover

astonished,

reverent within all of 

our variances.

69. Stars

Stars skip out over the black branches

of screwbean mesquite, catalyzing

coyotes hungry for a breeze,

a rabbit, each other.

.

I would guide your hand across my body

star to star and between each

we would be one in one space.

If you were here I would,

to hear your breath catch

to taste the desert dust

crushed creosote and wolfberries

and the sweat-salt of hunger

hot on our cracked lips.

I would tenderly swing my body

in an arc as wide as Sonoran horizons

to include all of you in my passion,

quiet as midday, bold as midnight

and strong as both

in joined silence.

.

Creosote blooms leak notes the desert air

hangs all the other notes from 

to weld a symphony.

.

65. Red Rocks

I woke up this morning

as a rose growing 

in the red rock cleft

above Denver in ’86,

four hours lost and 

years skipped like Arkansas

which doesn’t exist–

he’s got a hand 

roving on my hip talking

hard and laughing,

climbers dangling off

red rock off to the left

of the cleft

and I’m in love.

60. 1989 (for F)

In this photograph grass is dirty

blond pelt of earth, blown to 

bend inland, blown to 

bend over to touch your 

flanks the way my hair leaned 

in candlelight toward you, your 

tender palms currying 

my own flanks.

.

In the photograph your black eyes

lock to the lens, keeping you.

.

In this photograph of your lithe 

body young by the sea, casual

in its place against earth, intense 

in its focus on my hand cradling 

a cold camera, every slow 

night gone leans inland, arrives

on a new wind

to wake me from age.

56. nomad

because one candle burned down last night

gutting itself on its own light

while the other casts one more day loose 

i suspect the timing of all pairs is off by a breath

a footstep 

one caress.

still, the still night’s beauty

burns a million holes in the black sky,

all lucid affirmation and complicated constellations 

dreamed every century by nomads 

who find each other.  

it is true that my faith in stars 

and the symmetry of two 

matches closely enough 

a moment 

the cast of an eye

and that candles are for settlers

whom I never really understood.

51. Just Lust

I could not find enough of him

to satiate lust and sure, every

time I glanced across the table

there were his hungry eyes.

Dios, le cuide.

If my body song ran

harmony to the side show

of words we traded,

if yours wove itself 

in complement, what

meteors we would be.

Dios, nos cuide.

My sweet hungers crave

beyond, lasting with other men

whose love squares

spare moments.

50. marfa

an original nebraskan

on west texas desert highway

in a white golf 

convertible, holding a camel

between brown fingers

is saying to me

so the cacti are edible

using his brown hands like brushes

air our movie screen.

one warm hand slides down

my spine like water, lights

there on the hills flickering 

with my approval. you

can pay me back for texas

with kisses, he suggests

which i start right away

paying him back for giving me

sky and a day of laughter.

​​i want

he says pausing for effect

two brown fingers and a camel pointing 

​​to be married in Marrakesh.

i had to admit i’d never been there.

48. Basra

.

Spinning fast down a narrow 

track that clings to the 

tenuous layer of thin existence

balanced finely

between the infinity of 

hot blue sky and the 

vast plain of slippery 

golden sand dissolving under the 

burden of a relentless 

sun,

two kilometers east of 

The Tree 

(the only

Tree):

two foxes.

 .

They heard

us coming.

As we rose over the shimmering

curvature of horizon

they ran 

ripping

twin dust clouds off the 

broad surface

of the planet, cutting 

thin trails through the 

interminable heat to

disappear

over the slow

curvature of the earth’s edge

south 

 .

toward

nothing.

 .

Just sand.