Summer is a puta. I park
beneath branches, crank up the AC in the Jeep.
I hate the rearview mirror.
It makes me look like my father. Chaste & singed. Last week,
beneath a sky Wal-Mart blue,
in a clearing full of bottles, sneakers, TP rolls,
I found a body. Legs
gnawed to the knees, barbed wire tight
around
the throat.
I remembered graffiti
on a boulder: God
is always hungry.
Sometimes, with binoculars,
I watch wild horses
hurry through the heat. Once
a yearling stopped mid-gallop,
then collapsed
into a bed of coals the rain could not extinguish.
The radio
is always crackling:
six wets sighted on infrared,
need a spic speaker stat. . .
I only speak Spanish with my father.
He often mistakes blue parakeets
perched
on the stove for gas flames.
Last July, far from Tucson,
I found a rape tree:
torn panties draped on branches.
The tree a warning,
a way for smugglers
to claim terrain.
Lightning climbs a hillside like a stilt walker.
Rain
strikes the windshield.
I think of my wife
asleep on her side. Breasts
pressed together
as if one were dreaming the other. Her womb
empty.
My dick useless.
There are things I just can’t tell her.
Sometimes only body parts remain.
They’re buried
in baby caskets.