WEBVTT

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This next one is
called "Saguaros."

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"Blythe rises in welts.

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It pinches California
and my mother,

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the menstruating
horizon between the two.

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Thus it was with her.

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She a cloud, long
and placed perfectly.

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Sky strong and full of
torn cornflower blue.

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Before me, the babies were born
as still and silent as mercury,

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a victory for her when
her field caught seed

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and bloomed startlingly open.

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I was born in a dry world and
we lived as chasms among men.

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Saguaros with hundreds of
years holding rain, the same,

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in a sense, as wild beasts
in battle who want for water.

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We were mistaken in taking
from the cracked ground,

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brown and spent.

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Forget men.

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We were better off withholding.

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I tell you this
because she's gone now,

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and you are a kind and
forgiving reader, seeking truth.

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For truth, I say, I
remember this mother,

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the mother of my nights,
bringing home a jackrabbit,

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pulling a tooth trap from its
pelage to slit the pregnant

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belly, knowing the body to be
a stasis and the desert a hell,

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and the knife the only
bridge between the two."

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