Alejandra y Leticia

Alejandra tries to ignore

the blisters on her heel.

She keeps her eyes on her daughter

Leticia's hooded figure

a dozen steps ahead.

Listens to the soft crunch

her duct taped shoes

make on sand in the arroyo.

She whispers a string of numbers,

one with each step, each breath.

The cell phone contact she will call tomorrow

or the next day or the next one after that.

For the promised job in a hotel.

Making beds and cleaning bathrooms.

The sky is brightening and already

the cool of the night is changing

into the furnace of the coming day.

Tomas, the coyote who has lead them

across the desert, stops under a clump

of tamarisk trees overhanging the bank

of the arroyo. Raises his hand

and gestures for them to hurry.

Points at the scanty shade

where they will wait until night

to resume their trek.

Leticia sits down and slumps

against the trunk of a tamarisk

without bothering to check

for any scorpions that might

still be hunting in the leaf litter

under the tree.

Opens her eyes when Alejandra

flops down beside her

and asks, Are you thirsty, mija?

take a little sip of my water,

but save the rest for later

when the sun will be more cruel.

When we get to our new home,

I will buy you so much soda

you can take a bath in it.

Leticia stares at Alejandra,

sets down the dirty purple

stuffed elephant that she has

clung to for a thousand miles

of buses and vans, and now

this long march through the desert.

She gulps some of the cloudy water

in the two liter plastic Pepsi bottle

that her mother hands her and sighs.

When will we get there, Mama, when?

Soon, mija, soon. Tomas says

one more night of walking

and then we will ride in a car.

Can you sleep? Shall I sing for you

Your favorite corrido?

I must sing it very quietly, ok?

Había una vez una princesa

que vivía en un gran castillo....

At the end of the world

The finger of Pierce Point

points towards Siberia.

Feels like the end of the world.

When a Northwest wind

chills my ears, I could almost

ride the updraft and chase

the setting sun.

At a thousand miles per hour,

night would never catch me.

The bloody fire in the sky

always just ahead,

painting icy mountains

and gray cities

in its rosy glow.

Unfortunately, I'm too slow.

I turn away from the Pacific view

and walk back past

the rutting elk and jutting rocks

the shattered cypress

and shuttered barn

to where the trail

begins and ends:

the parking lot.

The wall

rerun the paragraph.

again again I fail

to untangle cars

from houses or

bananas.

the magazine claims

to reveal the real

substantiated

information

that will shift

the course of history.

I would care more

if time could slip back

a dozen days or so.

before this wall

of inescapable fact

that a never ending flow

of classic movies or

breaking news loops

fails to distract me

from this dark wall.

taller than the ones

on any border,

I know you're in there.

trapped inside your skull.

with a lifetime's,

laughter, tears

and boredom,

christmas mornings

weddings, beaches,

camping trips

and yard work,

arguments about

household chores

and the time I ran away.

I'm glad that you

still laugh and even

managed to make a joke

somehow. before you

slipped back again

behind that wall

fighting to speak

your name or mine

or the month

when you were born.

Crossroad

Jimmy coasts up

to the crossroad.

A crow sits atop

the eight-sided red sign.

The road to the left

goes to Armageddon,

the one to the right

goes to the newly

constructed

national prison.

On the road

straight ahead

the eastern sky

is blackening, night falling.

The pink glow

of a slot machine

palace beckons,

where the house wins

ninety-nine times

out of a hundred.

The crow dances left,

bobs right, flips around,

aims her beak

towards the gleam

on the western horizon.

Jimmy figures his odds

are better at the slots

than legendary locations,

and accelerates dead ahead

towards the Nazareth casino.

As he passes,

the crow chuckles,

squirts a crap on his hood,

and flies off to her cozy nest

where the western sun

is reddening into night.

We invest our souls and dreams in stone:

We invest our souls

and dreams in stone:

the ten admonishments

Moses brought down

from the mountain,

the silk-shrouded Kaaba

that we circle seven times

at the Great Mosque in Mecca.

The walls that seek to seal empires

from influence, barbarians,

and strawberry harvesters.

The prayers we slide in the gaps

between the limestone blocks

that remain of the Second Temple.

The standing Buddha

that the Taliban tried to erase 

with cannons could not eclipse

the millions of Buddhas carved or cast

honored with candles and incense

and draped with yellow silk sashes.

We prize the eternally incorruptible

property of gold, but it never

touches the heart like the electric

current that ran from the nape of my neck

to the wings of my shoulder blades

when I kissed the cold marble

that covers the slab where Jesus

was laid and rose from the dead.

Pharaohs and emperors,

eminent statesmen and presidents,

bronze generals on bronze horses

all aspire to outlast

the strange creatures

limned in the Burgess shale.

Will they even last as long

as the rotund Venus figurine

carved from a Mammoth tusk

in the Pleistocene?

Does Lincoln now gaze sadly

up the Mall at the Capitol

where lesser men scrabble

for loot and booty?

Memory will not preserve

their battle as long as the wasp

and spider trapped in amber

a hundred million years ago.

We surely have a date

with some insensate stone,

a collision with some asteroid

arced our way by Jupiter's

slingshot. It's happened before.

I once had the pleasure to see

and touch the fossilized skull

of a Triceratops that occupied

the entire top of an industrial desk

locked in an obscure storeroom

of the Earth Science Building at Cal.

He never saw the fatal asteroid coming.

If another one falls, we probably will.

Perhaps some Eve and Adam 2.0

will gaze in wonder at whatever remains

of cities half-devoured by jungles or

smothered under ash dunes and cinders.

I look each day at a smaller wonder,

a fossilized leaf I split from a layer

of Eocene silt that now sits under

a palm-sized plastic Triceratops,

beside the laptop on my desk.

A message received:

all life is by chance

and sometimes by chance,

rendered in stone.

Winter solstice innovations

There's someone under

that thick synthetic plaid

on some kind of improvised

sleeping pad.

Man or woman unrevealed,

head nestled on a stained

white vinyl office chair

tipped on it's back

that does double duty

as a pillow and a dolly

for his or her possessions:

goodwill boots and shopping bags.

Second block, second sleeper,

upright soft skin suitcase

unzipped so the sleeper's

head is sheltered in the suitcase

from the pre dawn December

wind - which has whipped

the golden ginko leaves

off the street trees

and sprinkled them

festively on the man or woman

hidden under a blanket 

with his or her head

snuggled in the

once upon a time

smart and stylish

carry on nylon luggage.

Body of evidence

That lips remember

more than toes,

for that kiss

purchased with betrayal

for a moment's bliss.

That half a century

can be dissolved

by the scent

of orange groves

on late april nights.

That warm arms

are more comforting

than well meant words.

That our world begins

and ends

-at the boundaries

of our skins.

That the scar on my left knee

from a farm house tumble

still itches when the weather is

as hot and dry as that 

summer in the valley day.

That I have to mute the radio

if certain songs come up

before tears steal my vision

and my throat.

That I can only fly in dreams

but I still recall the fall

when the branch of the cottonwood

snapped

and I landed on my back

breathless, alive, unhurt.