print previewback GAIL MARTIN
To My Hips, Both Removed
Near the Air Force base in Tucson, the boneyard
stretches for miles, mothballed warplanes
parked wing tip to wing tip in the desert.
Abandoned and ransacked, cannibalized
for fishhooks and Chevy fenders. Of course
boneyard makes me think of you two, incinerated
by now, back in Michigan. I’m recovering from the loss
of you, my days play out counting lizards and their shadows.
The saguaros hum with patience, waiting fifty years
to grow arms. The night-blooming cereus bides
her time to bloom just once before dying.
The desert is a harsh home. The devil’s claw
knows it, creeping forward on thorny elbows,
survivor gasping for water. We prop the hood up
on our rental car at night so pack rats don’t settle in.
And once, it would have been enough
to know there are species of fish who live here,
perennials—bonytail chub, razorback sucker—
resting and riding out the hard season. But
you have surprised me, the way truth can. You
let me down—collapsed like the biohazard
waste you’ve become—and the truth?
I miss you. Like the flyboy misses his B-52.
The cereus doesn’t in fact die, she breaks just once
into flower, that alluring perfume, and goes back
to being a brown stalk in the desert. Nothing lasts.
Hummingbirds rappel down the palo verde trees
above loose-jointed cholla. And still the cactus wren
thrives inside thorns, and although the fire-tipped ocotillo
lifts its barbed arms to the sky, it does not surrender. 
To My Hips, Both Removed