Poem: Sucked

Sucked

 

the gully had lost its tongue of water,

could not sing from broken staves

with clefs of torn bark. 

long gone hooves of whipped horses

sweated the bed in haunted cacophony;

had stabbed it with their dead stampedes.

even now a few tail-eating shoes

fretted like rusty knives.

 

the only liquid was a mousy dram

taken in the night by a cloaking owl,

or fanged from a faceless rabbit.

heatwaves chewed

on what could not be sucked,

and the jumping cholla reached high,

sihouetted kin of a crucifix,

praising their golgotha.

 

shadows outflanked a coyote,

unrolled a slow sarcophagus

over a sprinkle of paralyzed lizards.

the one cloud looked down,

bulbous gavel of an absent judge;

or the rudder of a helmsman

absconded to the pub, unable to score,

a carouse more wisp than teat.

 

======================

6/5/26 ... eds all day ...  

“Cylindropuntia fulgida … possesses many common names, though the most common one is "jumping cholla", which comes from the ease with which the stems detach from the main plant when brushed, "jumping" onto passing animals.”

"tail-eating"  = ouroboros = visual symbol for a horseshoe, symbol for desert, etc.