In the pink light,
haloes of cloud form over the mountains;
lightning, two valleys away,
then, not an hour later,

the explosion of thunder.
The roadrunners
pecking for breadcrumbs on the porch
have long since fled into the rabbitbrush,

into the endless ocean of grass.
Driving in every direction
down licks of red road, I have lost
myself in a militarized topography;

everything named after army units,
generals, scouts, miners…
The Dragoon Mountains,
Cochise Stronghold; defunct

Gleeson and Pearce,
weird, rusty ghost towns, the only
non-derelict structure
for miles, the local school,

its polished windows and well-kept lawn,
a source of great local pride.
No mountain monograms
for these desiccated whistle-stops,

no giant Q or C or W in bright
white paint to mark
the township's still functional
sorta functional breathing, no

carving for them
into the planet's bark;
and thus they are blesséd
to me like no other;

every successful city
is a flimsy affair with civility,
its eternalness, like Paris or Rome,
mere hypocrisy.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,
BUY REAL ESTATE! Hail follows rain.
Nearby, the township of Sunsites,
once billed as the safest

spot to survive
the inevitable nuclear winter,
actually topped Soviet Russia's
list of high-priority targets… Enter

the Orange Duck Candidate.
A haboob sweeps across
the Valley of the Senile.
In a week, the mountains

have switched from brown
to purple to green.
The desert is human
endeavour's most fitting graveyard;

the slow bleaching,
the gradual eroding into sand,
the heat stifling sound as it leaps into the air.
IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE. But it always does.

Sulphur Springs Valley

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