So I think I'm going to read just
a few Cactus Poems and some Warblers,
and then we'll be done.
This book, Political Cactus Poems, is pretty old now,
I think.
But I should read some because it really
was born in this landscape.
I spent quite a lot of time in around the Organ Pipe Cactus
National monument hiking in the desert out there--
landscape that Gary Nabhan has written about so
beautifully, for example-- and was lucky to witness the spring
bloom, the 20 year-bloom that happened, I think, in the late
like '97 or '98.
And was just overwhelmed with how lush the desert could be.
At the same time we were bombing Kosovo.
And I was feeling bristly about things,
and the cactus became a great ally for me.
So I wrote this series of political cactus poems
and really working not from any expertise about cacti
so much as from a field guide and my ear and the encounters--
sometimes uncomfortable encounters--
that I had with these species out there in the desert.
So each poem begins with a Latin title, the Latinate binomial
of the cactus.
"Aporocactus Flagelliformis."
I'm writing these instead of walking in the snow.
The pull your call has on me.
Poor old wormy cactus.
I pull you out, stem by stem, to whip myself
into a better state of mind.
To salute the spring with open arms, like any poor old cactus.
OK.
This one was written after 2001 but before 2008.
"Aporocactus Martianus."
Is the president from Mars, a creeping pendant body
with two eyes narrowly set about the blockade?
No one reminds me anymore, not even the sparrow
thrashing in the tire pool.
Our days are long.
The Sun disappears behind a fog bank
without your flashy crimson flowers.
"Ariocarpus Fissuratus."
Aryan theories hold that a carp gave birth to Adam,
deeply wrinkled on the surface, like a toad with a rough.
His blunted tip rises into the sun
with white gunk between the buds,
a fully bearded urethra, lips cracked, the stamens virgin.
"Arrojadoa Beateae."
An unusual species only discovered in 1987,
more or less erect, bipartisan, votes along party lines,
is not a favorite of progressives
who have absorbed tactics arising from the terminal head,
spines and flowers pointed in the same direction.
Read distinguishes these from the woolly grouted
Stalin-whipped Bush ideologues.
A couple more of these.
"Austrocactus Hibernus."
The pesky third party politics, bringing this nose head
to such a pass, are short, erect, and greenish.
Realizing the fake plastic grass grandpa had labored
over all a summer's day in miniature golf
was no substitute for our cosmos,
appealing to a painful sense of estrangement
up in Michigan, water, water everywhere, and not a drop
to sell.
I think that was my Ralph Nader poem.
Here's the last one.
"Aztekium Ritteri."
Denizen of the stony slate slopes, often
spouting from the base with glandular revisions
of national priorities.
Its paper spines soon fall out, presenting
a wrinkled sphincter-like head.
When kept in the limelight, delicate white and pink flowers
swoon in the flattery.
A rose-shaped talk show host slathers
on the expectant bulbs.