I must say I love to chew on the sharp
broken edge of you—a sweet sherry
pool at sunset—and then pretend to fall
off the edge of your small table name
and never come home. You know I tried
to leave you once, spent a year confused
and licking at the foot of some other
mountain, then came home determined
to impose naked breasts upon you
with your women of tears and dirt,
your women irrevocably tethered to drowning
their children, always wringing their hands
into stories.
A book reads over the speakers,
miles pass, at least the rivers, canyons
will sooth with beauty an unreachable wonder
of rock and bush till the checkpoint
only 3 exits, 3 miles, 30 minutes to misunderstood
war occupied by mixed traditions, lamented
expectations overcome by learned art,
infused with luscious tastes
Traded for pennies on the dollar
Tender arms, a bosom, enrapture my soul
Transform the trips down—
Now a journey home
I have run far, laid over continents immortalized
with history and grandeur, but I adore
your names of streets, the washboard bus stop
at the corner of Nacho and Arroyo Seco.
Inflations of those other experiences
disclose your value, Las Cruces, and though I’ve tried
to leave my skin by prostituting your names,
everyone identifies with the dry ditch here,
the layer of caliché that powders up
in the dry months until even the infants learn
there is nothing more to drink from you
without falling into despair or lust.
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