Poems to be Sent on Postcards of the Desert
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Lizard
folds of crinkled sentient leather you would go far to meet this sage of the desert, throat arranged as if to bring forth a gravelly speech. seamed mouth, brown eye indented in rich embroidery. you may ask one question, he says,and I’ll answer.
Seeker
if you go looking here, searching through seguaro and agave, amid prickly pear, if your eye ascends sheer rock to cirrus clouds you will see through to the center of the land where nothing is metaphor, where everything is simply what it is.
Justice
If I were justice I would sentence a criminal to the desert, to be with shiprock and scrub grass, walk on flat shale among agave-- sentence him to solitary freedom until he knew he was no longer solitary, and all his crimes and shackles were dissolved. [End Page 117]
Gambel’s Quail
Ornate deposed monarch, he walks with dignity the waste, crown in place. Prefers not to fly, thinks it vulgar, yet now and then just takes off in an explosion of wingbeats, feathers, then glides down like a plane. Regrets the past. Monogamous, tends to vote Republican, is not protected by any law. Is eleven inches tall, wing span broader than that. But walks. The young family come spring will walk across the desert, chests outthrust. [End Page 118]
Janet Mccann is a professor of English at Texas A&M University (College Station) and author poems published in such periodicals as Kansas Quarterly, Nimrod, New York Quarterly, Poetry Australia, and Parnassus. She is also author of Emily’s Dress (Pecan Grove Press, 2004) and Wallace Stevens: The Celestial Possible (Twayne, 1996).
