West Mesa, Albuquerque
Some days in November
when you come across the west mesa
the city is bathed in baubles of red,
a
thin rivulet of gold
and you get height on it
like you can’t from the East
and it does looks like a city of gold,
thickets of Spanish doubloons.
And seeing the pale, sunlit gold
you empty your pockets of coins
to collect all the leaves.
Mesa
Miles of grass up there
where in the almost-night
the outlines of cholla
look like very still cows
and a red moon rises up
over the edge where it has climbed
up the walls from the valley,
and it bears down on us
like an elevated,
intractable emotion.
And Mary's little lambs
sprawl across the altar,
the sacramental table
narrow and long beneath
the bread of that moon
red with blood
and the lambs wander
over the train's berm
one by one by one.
BIO:
My poems have appeared in Urthona Magazine, Phoebe—The Journal of Gender and Cultural Critiques, The South Carolina Review, The Wisconsin Review, Switched-on Gutenberg, Literal Latte, Natural Bridge, Mudfish, El Portal and the website Ape Culture. I also have poems in 2024’s Open-Hearted Horizon: An Albuquerque Poetry Anthology.
I was co-author of the hand-pressed chapbook St. Lou Haiku (2004, Timberline Press) and author of the DIY book projects Why Photographers Commit Suicide (a Finalist in the 2013 Indie Excellence Awards) and Cowboy Meditation Primer (a Silver Award Winner in the 2018 Nautilis Book Awards, a Finalist in the 2019 Indie Excellence Awards, and a Finalist in the 2019 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards).
I blog about poetry at bigbangpoetry.com and about pop culture as Cher Scholar and have other miscellaneous essays on Substack.
These poems below were all inspired by northeastern New Mexico, where my father’s family lived in the small railroad/homestead/ranching town of Roy. I would visit my grandparents there as a child. Over the years, I have lived in St. Louis, Yonkers and Los Angeles but when I was 40, I returned to New Mexico and now live in Albuquerque.
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