WEBVTT

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I marked a couple of other
Arizona poems in here.

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One that, this--
this was written

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somewhere in the
mountains outside Tucson.

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But I can't remember
how far outside Tucson.

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Might have been quite some ways.

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Anyway, I don't think of
this as a Phoenix poem.

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And I was leafing
through this book

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today, wondering what
the hell to read tonight.

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And I could remember this
afternoon very vividly,

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because I was walking around
in the 98 degree heat today.

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Anyway, this is
just called "Poem."

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"There was something I can't
bring myself to mention

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in the way the light seemed
trapped by the clouds,

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the way the road dropped
from pavement to dirt,

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and the land from pine to scrub.

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The red-headed vultures
on dead animals.

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The hatred of the
waitress breaking a cup

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and kicking the shards across
the cafe that looked out

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on the mountain and on the white
smear of the copper mine that

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sustained these people.

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I claimed there was
something you wouldn't

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have wanted to speak of either.

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A sense of some violent
treasure, like uranium, waiting

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to be romanced out of the land.

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They sat under white umbrellas--

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two or three together, elbows
on card tables at the dirt

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roads leading to the mines.

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Rising each at his turn to walk
around a while with a sign,

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announcing they were on strike.

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Their crystalline and indelible
faces in the hundred degree heat

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like the faces of
slaughtered hogs.

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And God forgive me.

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I pulled to the side of the
road and wrote this poem."

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