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  • When the Poisons Begin Doing Damage
  • Sawnie Morris (bio)

You Pausein the doorway, look back, observe.Inside the stucco is a house, inside the houseis where you live—a dwelling smeared with lime,the air dusted with cement product, and soyour swollen throat, inflamed lungs.

You FleeStain your composure:         rattle away in your blue Subaru aplomb, a less and less tight assemblage, the dirt road         another form of imminence. To the west, the gorge: its beckon and shale.

To the East:town. It’s buildings composedof %$@!+ and metals stolen from the ground.Everywhere disorienting reflectors.A crew of convex mirrors. Red, blue, brown.

Synthetic is the glue that holdsthe straight up. Pastes it upright. Bond beamsand floodlights. Walmart and Walgreens.Only the Pueblo and Church of St. Francis de Assisiseem made of their natural impermanence.

Forest. Straw. Clay. Sand…

A bucket of waterfrom the spring. [End Page 116]

Revulsion, Sets InYou are (a little) afraid of your whirlwind,it’s counter-clock-wise movement from the past,so you head responsibly east, to the town, to the job …You intendBut at the edge ofAt West Romero Road & Hwy 68, you can’t

(I mean it isn’t what—okayrepels.)                      The Unconscious Issues a Warning                          [the dream snaps you awake.                    Says: get up now, pack toothpaste, your black                    cloth bag, with local market insignia, books,                    lucky underwear, and favorite all-purpose cup.

                    Says: refuse a brain-full of lesions,                    a liver full of lead. Panicked? No—                    focused, with an edge.]

In Order to See    no, not see

In order to enter    her, youwhirl—make a u-turn,     set offacrossthe open mesato the eight-hundred foot deepgorge

You Presswith your toes in theirshoes at the edge of the snake-slittear     into the immediatecracks     dark entering placesbetween rocksabsorb througheach iristhe undulationshimmer     of stonecomposition     cliff sides inmovement [End Page 117] windingin sea-like wavesbelow   and   all   around   until

                    Now                you can give it full   rein                this that you feel                    for her            in her wilderness form            her ancient and nearly waterless                ocean floor, overcast,                benightedly undercast

        You can             breathe           her air, its cataphatic     movement     against skin,     your hands

What a relief to open her garmentto enter her raiment: its sophia and sage

Blue hills rise to mountainsThe roll and curve, if earthbe herin the round

                    even                    the beer                    and wine bottle shards                    the butts and shot gun shells                    that under the usual spell                    agitate

                    find their rightful insignificance                    slight signature                    of clawed feet                    in the corner of                    her, infinite [End Page 118]

Sawnie Morris

Sawnie Morris won the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award (2010) for a selection of five poems and was co-winner of the New Mexico Book Award (2007). Her poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, thedrunkenboat.com, The Journal, and Women’s Review of Books, and are forthcoming in Pool and Lana Turner. Her writing about poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Boston Review. She is book review and essay editor for the Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art and curator of art and activism for Amigos Bravos: Because Water Matters, a nonprofit protection and restoration organization for New Mexico’s waters. [sawnie@newmex.com]

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