IV

Haven’t taken it to the head for a minute on another
three day bender. Slept past sunrise. And then another. 

The bed has softened over the years, the stoop steps chipped.
Shanties clog memory: was it your most recent love, or another? 

Bangladesh is continually interrogated by floods, you tell me. 
Your reflection a mist; the mist a shadow; the shadow some other. 

Cracked clay riverbeds sound like a cross between square and
saw tooth waves. Always, we want the frequency to be another.

Late last night the house made a drawing of itself: bones, skin, 
and a hat. It preferred famine over feast. Liar. It consumed another. 

Dear Sound Wave, while sobriety arpeggiates, is reshaped by blurring
filters don’t think too much of any of us. This dissonance becomes another. 

V

Each year cool monsoons | show up hot with tension and | startles the desert.
Many of my friends | addicts and recovering | are soundless deserts.

A lightning struck tree | beware of its falling ash | the bright ochre sun.
The O’odham knew | an ancient sea receded | leaving the desert.

Shima saní says | Listen. Presses a buck knife | into my young hand.
Cut a yucca spike | the bayonet end won’t hurt | like summer deserts.

After years away | I came back to a ravine | filled with dead needles.
White skunk skeletons | under the crisp winter moon | the high dry desert.

I love this odd man | whose hometown burnt to the ground | ash—capitalism.
Where suffering is | accelerants devour | a pine-coned desert.

Why grow so high son | ‘ama saní asks—do not | forget your loved ones.
Their dried veins or scars | tended livestock or blind debt | loquacious deserts.