KEITH EKISS

Pima Road Notebook (I)

My mother’s voice echoed me nearer toward home.
Sad quail in the brush, searching for her children.
Her stain glass hobbies, her knotted macramé.
Bougainvillea papering the window, blood light.
Jackrabbit in summer, beating white heart.
A pheasant blown off-course into plate glass.
The vulture hopped as it ate, puppet-like.
The temperature of silence was always rising.
I could hear the needle of the palo verde drop.
She talked on the phone and hung up the phone.
I was left to wandering the saltbrush.
In desert light, in thirsty light, out past the houses.
Out past the idea of roads toward the dry wash.
Her medicine cabinet a cave of tints and scents.
I twisted her lipstick, the spiral a tendril.
Smelled the sweet clay of Sunset Red emollient.
Who broke the necklace of the river?
I straightened my dive through the infertile water.
Blue relief, our chlorinated swimming pool.