To Tucson, well, long ago, mythic Tucson poems,
this is called The Arroyo.
It has the F-word in it.
But it's part of a text, as you'll see, that--
a received text.
Disclaimer.
The Arroyo.
The perspective of lines or innocence, I love other bodies.
They always seemed to know the secret before I did.
My mother has come outside to hang up towels.
Cannon.
I'm in my nada body.
I'm about 10, dragging magnets through sand
in the arroyo to gather garnets from iron filings.
For others it's the ditch, or the wash, or drainage ditch.
She's the thin expert at hanging out daily life.
Squinting, I see she's either a one or a zero who
never makes a mistake outdoors.
Pink towels, shorts, sock, sock, sock, sock.
The sun is the mistake that works.
The dragging, then the filings, then picking out
garnets with tweezers in the hundred degree
heat of the arroyo.
She calls my name.
It brightens.
It's years before my period.
Chrome glint of the abandoned fender.
The doll's head softens near the jar.
These garments have backward facets.
The present tense saddens them.
Before the flash flood, I can make it to the end of the arroyo
where the hollow chalk couple has been
shown having sex on a rock.
If knowing alternates with seeing, dragging magnets
through the sand, thinking of them
is the place where I am not.
Childhood is one of our low points.
When I cough, the doves fly away.
She hangs up clothes, her nada, her single humming.
When she turns sideways, she is gone.
Pinch bird, beak, clothespins, she uses my whole name
to call me in.
A power comes up.
It's in between the voices.
It says, you can stop making sense.
The hollow chalk couple, oh, when I see them,
I will touch their penis.
It is the small blue tombstone turned sideways.
Touching it is the invention of the new.
Touching the signs next to them: fuck, dick, heart, heart, heart,
is the both invention.
Sex, and more exciting than doing it without talking.
I looked for the one who sought me without measure
and the waters broke away.
Waited for one who called, but she had gone in.
I called my love much later the same when I was not him.
The doll has become soft when left for about 20 minutes.
White stars take over the eyes, our garnets on wax paper
like minstrel blood.
Floods will come over the Earth, but the hollow's better.
Winds replace the chalk couple with sand.
The hawk sweeps and is gone.
Coyote, various night viceroys with yellow eyes.
Hollow body fills later in legs with specks of time,
boys with wandering and orderly hands, laughter, such as oh D.,
oh P., oh L., oh P., oh A.
I loved other bodies.
Even those I did not love, those of this generation,
we all, cruel lovers and kind when stoned in the South
and beaches between.
And the faceless chalk couple haunts me now, taut,
touch, language with the north hand, flesh with the right.
Even three decades later, in danger
of sort of the new disease and terror of backward,
convinced oneself is not the way to live
because we are lived through.
Not to fail what was left blank.
I gather the little jars of the elements to show her,
within pure joy exists a kind of hollow,
the inverse river, the opposite water.