Sestina 9

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.

By André Naffis-Sahely