Rainshadow

(December, 2015)

In so much
aridity;
The ground cracks
and salts.

We lick sweat from our foreheads
in brittle heat.

Sometimes,
pine trees hide the cracks.

This poem is
written in the lexicon of landscapes.
Red Bluff and sagebrush
clear cuts and creosote
chaparral and crop circles

We paint our body with artifice,
wear disguises.

We keep busy

Sometimes,
vacant riverbeds
empty reservoirs
irrigation ditches
become the cracks
amplified by the memory of sound,
of what else is now absent.

We keep busy

Pink almond flowers
now bleed brown into cracked ground
gnarled limbs
seared black against bleached sky.

Dust rises from a furrowed plain
coarse wind thickens the air

A red tractor sits crooked in the yard
glazed with blood
beneath the omni-sun.

We know fearful dust.

Stinging corneas, splitting knuckles, parched throats—

We devour our body.