First published in
Western Humanities Review

Polaroid Utopia.

Seven sodden silos of gilded cacti
loom at the top of a dirt lot.
The dirt of this lot is no copper-
speckled cloud. The hedges are barbed
wire. Saguaros swallow thorns in
the coarse rain. An empty cold has
shrunk the city to a Polaroid utopia.
Sacré bleu! Winter is a gaunt gimlet,
insomniac in sand; its new gift, blue
and skeletal, thrumming, who shivers,
“That plague of clockwatchers,
that lazybones of morning commutes!”
And so it is: Everyone applauds
that green sun shyly at the horizon.
For who can ignore the Jesus bug
crossing the pond? And who hides
in clouded soil, sinking to lazier bones?
No one is sick; nowhere, no
sickness. No one feels sick.