September in the Sonoran
and the night comes loose at the nape.
We sit barefoot on the porch,
grease shining on our mouths,
wine sliding between us.
The chicken lies open on paper towels,
picked thin,
still warm at the bone.
My father’s junk pile rises in the corral,
bed springs, wire ribs,
a rusted Ford fender bowed in the middle.
Nothing stacked.
Nothing forgiven.
The porch sags east.
The coops bow.
Even the yucca trees cant their thorned wrists
toward the seam in the horizon
where morning will break its own skin.
East is ignition.
East is where the house burned to slab
after a careless 1982 cigarette
bit down on dry grass and would not let go
until the sky swallowed it whole.
After rain, the ground gives back
what the fire couldn’t finish:
nails, screws, small iron teeth.
You can’t walk barefoot here
without stepping onto what survived.
Holes everywhere:
for snakes,
for tarantulas,
for the quick, soft-bellied things
that know how to disappear.
I used to think if I slipped behind the coop
I might come up somewhere else,
not walking but molting,
feathers in my throat,
speaking in a voice the dust could not follow.
a phone booth in Albuquerque,
the stage at graduation,
a life that didn’t taste like dust.
I drag my hand through my wind-tangled hair
and feel the old slingshot in my ribs,
that lift before the drop.
In the Sonoran
nothing stays upright for long.
Not houses.
Not men.
Not daughters.
You rise.
You arc.
You come back carrying it.
Rust in your palm.
Smoke in your lungs.
Leaning east
without meaning to.