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from Roswell to Rachel to the playas of Black Rock
chuckwallas bask fat in radioactive dunes
petroglyphs flip us a peace sign or is it a middle finger
in the spires & the frescoes & the stained glass
stone sculptures & iron fangs
it's only a facsimile of Nietzsche smiling
in a ten gallon hat & spurs
as villains cackle & twist the ends of their mustache
& the nervous endlessly gaze back at themselves
weeping over silver fortunes lost in the canyons
but it was just that buck-toothed gas station attendant
nose like a Joshua tree
he gave us a Paiute map, nice guy
sizzling in the wild neon hollows of the West
sliced open a cirrus cloud & let God's blood trickle
as the rattlers & coyotes took the stage to jam
hillbilly tribal incantations to a pregnant moon
blacked out by the horror vacui of a million Hoary bats
waxing on a draconic thunderhead
the Red Eye has reached its cruising altitude
nightfall slashing through
a flesh-colored moon above the Mojave
up where birds hum tunes to themselves in expert pitch
a full moon turns red from wildfire smoke
hanging there, disembodied in the valley
bloated from an inferno near Palm Springs
just north of Immortality & Derision
just south of Forked Tongued Insanity
west of Serious Laughter & Prescription Arguments
east of Furious Joy & Curious Repose
rolling into the Chevron, cobalt sky
as the dawn disintegrates
the sun's furnace bakes pigeon blood on our windshield
corpuscles race along blue & winding
veins, white knuckles lean on a torn map
color of bone, the color of snow on black asphalt
the mountain relief after relentless city attrition
alcoholic bums on Fremont moan
in tune with dirty engines
drug addled cops chasing a sugar rush skid
into the night-
shift
adobe-heart cracked, without reservation, the Big Chief
urinates behind a Payday Loan...
the Southwest sings its arias, plucks its folksongs
Here, the future can't cum without murdering
past lovers. Like the black widow eats her mate
after letting him do his business, this land was built
on losing hands. America's middle
is shrinking, waistlines expanding, but here,
it's below the waist
where the most accurate measurements are taken.
There could be some well-turned phrases
about the resilience of our species spoken
by well-tanned philosophers
with ghost writers who rough draft manuscripts
in luxury suites— all expenses comped.
It'll be a bestseller, an impulse buy. Here,
we snicker at the uninitiated: bobbleheads
of Elvis & Sinatra greeting wide-eyed farmers
(who don't know Europe from a french-fry)
gawking at scaled replicas of the Eiffel Tower
& the Arc de Triomphe. Bloated we celebrate
to canned applause, us transplanted East Coasters.
Grow your fingernails & beard long (viva Howard Hughes),
wear nothing but boxers, a bathrobe
& empty tissue boxes for slippers,
order room service anytime—
breakfast for dinner & Jell-O shots for dessert.
Increasingly allergic to blank spaces, watch out
for the desert brown recluse scrunched in the toe
of her right pump, infesting the folds of his addict-brain
when furiously pumping those poker buttons, shuffling for
a kicker with four aces.
Run your thumb down the dulled edges of the city's spine
dancing to the rock opera of backhoes & bulldozers,
suburbs flabby with streets named after tropical destinations
& cornball entertainers,
bright green palm fronds bristling
in the high noon, encrusted
with frost from a freaky cold December weekend,
refusing to go beige with the scenery,
standing at attention— that giant saguaro cactus like a dude
with a big boner praying in the neighbor's front yard.
You can't take booze & sex & motorhomes
away from the people, here. Lady Luck playing dominoes
inside an eastside Filipino restaurant
told me so. When June clicks on Mojave's oven,
professionals in polo shirts & golf spikes retire
cool to their gin & stock quotes. Everything timed perfect
like a backroom skim, a downtown demolition—
leaning to the right like Fox News programming.
We all swelter, weathering the brutal extremes, some
sequestered indoors to watch California burn on HDTV,
smoke caressing rooftops as fires devour gym rooms.
Like some kinky ritual:
a feathery boa draped across her navel in a dim-lit motel,
muscled thighs of showgirls kick & gyrate,
hot & visceral, no fallacy of privacy, the poetry
of public implosion captured by sneaky paparazzi
in the oily sunshine hauling in the dirt
so everyone can play a few rounds & take their shots,
stroke after stroke—
if you get any pangs of conscience
in your one ton pickup & a trailer loaded with ATVs
on the way to a long weekend in Yosemite,
you know, you can get a good deal on a vasectomy
if you just call the number you see
on any of those billboard ads in your face
while speeding along U.S. Route 95.
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Chris D'Errico has worked as a line cook, a doorman, a cheesemonger, and an exterminator. His poems have appeared in literary journals and online magazines, in print and scattered throughout cyberspace, such as Las Vegas City Life, My Favorite Bullet, Thunder Sandwich, and Thieves Jargon. Offcenter Press published his chapbook Debris of Hearts in 2007, Virgogray Press published his book Vegas Implosions in 2008. He fronts the harmonica-heavy, experimental funk/blues project Sidewalk Beggar. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife, Tracy.