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JOHN MACKER
the roaring stillness across open ground I’m kicking up the desert dust with my two dogs on the kind of dry crisp morning that draws the blue sky down around it & everything that exists under it the hummingbirds spanish bayonet the enflamed loose ends of war, the yellow snakeweed & bahia blossoms bobbing in the breeze like rogue stars. The emergence myths that rise from the earth in ghost vendettas of language. The piney smell of the hike resuscitates us mothers us into knowing these rituals come with the territory- where we’re amazed at the proximity of faraway war, its roaring stillness across open ground: lone rufous hummer destined for Mexico last supper of the summer at our plastic nectar blossom, controlled burn-colored body hovering: thinks I’m the chief flower of my species crisscrosses my Hawaiian shirt like a bandolier, signifying a farewell of sorts, the last of his tribe still this far north from the Crossing of the Fathers to the Rio Grande a thousand heartbeats per minute miles to go before real peace. Hungers Like Every Blowing Wildness His pale face turns crimson in the white heat of the desert he palavers with the September distance between the morning’s first dry breath & the border. Out here even infinity has an edge underneath it the lost souls cross a thousand distinct hungers like every blowing wildness of dusk etched on these threadbare blue skies. Out here, hell is a blank white page our wars are written on & when the ink dries like some future dead river we’ll stay poor elusive under the devil’s breath. Our names are Billy, Cochise, Juan, Pedro, Victorio, Alias, Juh. Her names are Serafina, Maria, Linda any flowing river’s softness: a female rain tamping the earth like faraway barefoot steps in a dream. The rising pale moon over my shoulder is a battle-scarred desert trickster, she pulls the baked sand & mesquite up into the blackness with her & bathes all souls moving towards oblivion below in her transparent aching light. I think I smell scalp-hunters, one of us said. A sensation of the nose crawling through the thick hot air, of sizzling flesh; red, nine inch nail faces like sunburnt homicides palavering with no living thing; rancid, dreamless nights bandoliers criss-crossing tattooed chests ex-slaves, white trash shanty Irish, Texans, Comancheros, Mexicans Mongols of the Sonora pursuing the summer Apache Back to Janos. They’re giddy with trance & fever stopped dead in their tracks on the cusp of civilization half broiling lathered ponies wide-eyed with anticipation of the fresh kill just over the line in Texas. Serafina holds Juan in her sandy arms a multitude of remote silences & whispers on the arroyo bottom. I am your woman of the disturbed earth. Didn’t make it to water intime. Her brothers are handcuffed to each other on the highway near Covered Wells. A coyote crosses the arroyo, a trance-like smile on his mouth. Stands over a pale, frail rat his evening tongue turned crimson. Disposition of the survivor, yips for a temporary companion In the red-tipped ocotillo desert. John Macker’s most recent book is Adventures In The Gun Trade, (Las Vegas: Long Road/Temple of Man,2004). Previous books include The First Gangster and Burroughs At Santo Domingo. An “epic” poem, Wyoming Arcane will appear in the pages of mad blood #4 next spring. Lives in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. |
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