The expanses from the highways
Seem endless, impenetrable:
Vast fields of roughened flax,
Layered hills in variegated colors,
Cities of cactus, vales of sage,
Dry streambeds clogged with stones,
Sculpted cliffsides made out of sand…
But down the red cloud roads
Inside the chaparral, there are towns
For pioneers, with names like Brenda and Salome,
Where the citizens are free to blacken the sky with a bonfire of tires,
Or to paint their trailers pink, or arch them with trellises of thorn.
On this road there is a place called Hope,
With an airstrip
And a radio tower,
The Victory Mile Café,
The Little Church of Hope,
Then a sign that simply says
“You are now beyond Hope.”
There's another place called Love,
And spots named Gladden, Ambrosia Mill,
None are more than a few stray doublewides
Every half a mile or so, some abandoned,
Some strung with February Christmas lights,
Some companioned by a giant rusted thresher.
In Harcuvar there's a steakhouse out of nowhere,
In Wenden, Kibbee's Shopping Center & “Laundermat.”*
The Ocotillo Lodge and Sajuaro Hotel are both long closed,
But the Cactus Bar with its blinking martini glass in Salome
(“Where she danced” – “Home of the fighting frogs”) is hopping
With snowbirds from the RV Parks, that out here look like ranches,
Their signs in oval iron swaying overhead, tagged with names like
Coyote Flats, Horspitality, Morenga Palace, Dripping Springs.
Their wagon trains need propane, and for that there's Passmore Gas,
Or the last chance Texaco, the Timbuktu Garage.
For the road soon veers to nothingness, and the only friendly face
Is the occasional roadside sign, sponsored by the Desert Zephyrs
Or the Doom Family, marking out the miles to go
Before Lake Alamo or the Vulture Mine Road.
In the rainbow desert sunset,
Distant lights along the brush fields—
What kind of person would look out on all of this as home,
Would swap out what is human for some ironwood and cholla,
For the glaring scratchboard light of the cosmic barrio?
At the Eagle Eye Mart in Aguila,
On the corner of 1st and 492nd,
The desert night is lit up by a swap meet tent
Lined with the pictures of the saints
Arranged like baseball trading cards on the wall.
Migrant cantaloupe farmers crowd around them and stare.
The desolate before God must be hungry for their own kind.
* Just in case you can't drive the 40 miles to Quartzsite for the Beall's Outlet Store or the Chester's Chicken, or the 60 miles to Wickenburg for a Safeway or a bank.
