(From the volume "Engines of Desire")


She was an angel to the redlands,
A cheerleader from God.
Each cut she cleansed held promises
Each eye she stitched was open
To the pinnacles' revelations.
She tried to be tender to bronze teen whores
Whose youth was pressed by the sun
Whose time was taken too hard.
From night to night their obsidian eyes
Saw her lie.

At night the tribal bucks would come
And cut themselves fat slices
Of her young white belly
And her untried cries,
Leaving soft-lipped wounds
That she would stitch with prayer
And wash with alcohol.
Her visions of those nights
Were red grit under her eyelids
From week to week the doctors
Turned to upright red stone.

'¹Ë?
After a year she cried for her lies,
Closed her eyes to the dust
Of redrock on the wind.
She took up with Doc Cuervo,
Tasted deep of her own medicine
And let it all fall down around her.
From year to year she grew redder
And her touch came to heal.

Stitching and staunching,
Clipping, injecting,
She found the heart of her mission
On the cold stone night floors.
She paid for her love
And moistened her eyes
And turned her dry heart to worship
The warm air, the tight flesh,
The cool glass, the taut truth.
From time to time she saw it all
But was quick to recover.

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