*

I know exactly what I wouldn’t give

to stand in that haunted house again—

 

to have the long goodbye, fated-to-fail

antidote to calcified sorrow.

 

In the desert, a pillar of salt could save you.

 

*

The golf course, bitter reef of

abandoned grasses, flickers.

 

Traveling between shadows,

our skins pull away from themselves.

 

I lie in the dead heat,

not knowing that when I get home

 

the ocean will throw back

a skin of drained jade.

 

*

 

In the desert, we are all warriors,

venom is everywhere,

 

and the known world only

the beginning.

 

*

 

If you love your world,

you publish her secrets,

open the gates for anything alive.

 

*

 

In old stories, the sound of rain was medicine.

When the wind rides low

 

and you feel the blood coming,

remember it is only

 

the god you learned when you were young,

returning your call.

 

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