Arizona rises in welts.

It pinches New Mexico and my mother,

the menstruating horizon between the two.

Thus it was with her. She, a cloud long

and placed perfectly. Sky strong and full

of torn cornflower blue, ravaged

to strings.  Before me, the babies were born

as still and silent as mercury. A victory

to her when her field caught seed

and bloomed startlingly open—

I was born in a dry world, and we lived

as chasms among men, saguaros

with hundreds of years holding rain;

the same, in a sense

as wild beasts in battle, who want for water.

We were mistaken in taking

from the cracked ground, brown

and spent. Forget men.

We were better off withholding.

I tell you this because she’s gone, now,

and you are a kind and forgiving reader,

seeking truth.

For truth, I say I remember

this mother, the mother of my nights

bringing home a jackrabbit,

pulling a tooth trap from its pelage to slit

the pregnant belly, knowing

the body to be a stasis and the desert a hell,

and the knife the only bridge between the two.