By Mark Fitzpatrick
mesa after mesa after mesa
endless rock cactus dust
endlessly drifting clouds
endlessly violent blue pressing down on your skull
endless heat
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Does the heat come from within you?
Your body like a steam engine,
the blood boiling to create pressure?
Or does the heat penetrate you,
melt you and eliminate you
until you are just a wisp of half-consciousness
evaporating in the desert sun?
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I am from a place where I was told,
“You are mestizo, hija!
Everyone has mixed with everyone else—
You are the same soup as the next person.”
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The word sounds more romantic in my tongue,
“mestizo,”
“mestizo” and “racismo”—
quite the cocktail, drank all my life
until I staggered under it,
until I screamed, “Basta!” “Enough!”
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So here we are in the desert
in the thirst of a lifetime,
passing like ghosts through walls of burning emptiness,
heading north to a land flowing with honey and hip-hop.
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mesa after mesa—endless
endlessly violent blue,
you start talking to the prickly plants—
even though others accompany you
feeling of isolation
endless
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Not a week into our journey
our legs weak as sponges,
jittery from dehydration . . .
the lifeless body blocked our path
lying like the dead Christ in front of us.
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Probably not dead long
since no beast nor bug had gnawed her flesh yet.
She lay there as if freeze-framed in a Saturday night dance pose:
hair strung out on the ground like it was flying behind her,
mouth slightly open as if to exhale,
arms positioned in semaphores,
pink/purple nylon jacket,
stone-washed blue jeans,
white tennis shoes smudged brown.
Stiff, still like the cactus, the stony land, the scattered animal bones,
like the endlessness.
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The ground so hard we couldn’t dig deep enough,
could not decently bury her;
our fingertips cut and bleeding and stinging;
our fingerprints left in blood among the rocks.
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mesa after mesa—endless
endlessly drifting clouds
endless feeling of desperation
endless as the very wall itself,
like giant Venetian blinds stood on end.
curved metal with slots just wide enough
to pass cocaine or holy communion through.
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The desert and death teach you to pray:
a deeper part of you the heat cannot sink into
comes raging out of you:
sometimes, as a line of angry rap;
mostly, as tears;
often, as screams
echoing through this desolate landscape
endlessly.