Desert Theory
by Matthew W. Baker
— after Saguaro National Monument, AZ by Ansel Adams
Sometimes I cannot translate my open legs, their longing--
they are a cactus shot through with shadow and longing.
At dusk, the city streets suffused with lavender dust, drums
pump through the club’s doors. I inch forward in this line of longing.
In the neon pulse, my hips a more assured machine than day--
ice clinks in my glass—crystalline music dispersing my longing.
But each morning comes with its procession of hours, my mouth
parched, night’s wet lips leaving another horizon of longing.
Some days, I am all bleak—a thumb dipped in the thickest oil,
flammable from the slightest provocation, blackened smoke of longing.
Do I crave the land or the thick length of a man? To enter
or be entered, my body a ready tunnel of longing?
Or an eight-fingered hand, a halo of dark sky while below
the ground groans in tangles of shrubs who’ve given up longing.
Sometimes I replay my drive across Arizona as if
it lacked color: blues, greens, browns glossed to gray, gradients longing
for any cloud cover. In Lucie’s words, “For whom…am I
first?” Oh—why do I keep catastrophizing this longing
despite having spread myself across multiple states--
haven’t I seeded enough memories to stop this songing?
Inside, the saguaro’s meat is hardy, sluiced by water drawn
from parched earth. Are the playa’s cracks a map to my belonging?
To believe each thing has its place. To believe the road stops
forking. To place my thighs around him and call it homecoming.
(O—don’t stop. O god, tap the oil-dark well inside me--
me me me—me centered inside his mouth, its wild tonguing.)
O to ride it until my name’s two syllables collide in the wind
pumped from his throat and relieve me—if only for a moment—from my longing--
Sometimes I cannot translate my open legs, their longing--
they are a cactus shot through with shadow and longing.
At dusk, the city streets suffused with lavender dust, drums
pump through the club’s doors. I inch forward in this line of longing.
In the neon pulse, my hips a more assured machine than day--
ice clinks in my glass—crystalline music dispersing my longing.
But each morning comes with its procession of hours, my mouth
parched, night’s wet lips leaving another horizon of longing.
Some days, I am all bleak—a thumb dipped in the thickest oil,
flammable from the slightest provocation, blackened smoke of longing.
Do I crave the land or the thick length of a man? To enter
or be entered, my body a ready tunnel of longing?
Or an eight-fingered hand, a halo of dark sky while below
the ground groans in tangles of shrubs who’ve given up longing.
Sometimes I replay my drive across Arizona as if
it lacked color: blues, greens, browns glossed to gray, gradients longing
for any cloud cover. In Lucie’s words, “For whom…am I
first?” Oh—why do I keep catastrophizing this longing
despite having spread myself across multiple states--
haven’t I seeded enough memories to stop this songing?
Inside, the saguaro’s meat is hardy, sluiced by water drawn
from parched earth. Are the playa’s cracks a map to my belonging?
To believe each thing has its place. To believe the road stops
forking. To place my thighs around him and call it homecoming.
(O—don’t stop. O god, tap the oil-dark well inside me--
me me me—me centered inside his mouth, its wild tonguing.)
O to ride it until my name’s two syllables collide in the wind
pumped from his throat and relieve me—if only for a moment—from my longing--
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