Superbloom

The defensive beauty of the desert
At dawn hadn’t unnerved us, but
It was all a bit much
By midday. Barrel cacti shadowless
With their honeybee buds. Torches

Of ocotillo, ruby tips ragged
As bitten fingernails stretching
Toward an indifferent sun. We walked
Into it anyway, dazed from a type
Hyperkulteremic alarm, diverging
Across the sand toward patches
Of color and thorn that promised
Conversation. I envisioned throwing
Myself saint-like against a sauguaro,
The transverse spines of daily
Survival crushed deep like fiberglass
Inside my chest, cheek, and thighs.

I was not my self that day and neither
Was my friend.  If I went too far, I could die
Out here, I said. She raised the black
Telephoto lens for another selfscape
Of barbed poppies, desert lilies. Her skin
An absent specter. Maybe nothing
Is real, she said, or some such bullshit
That made me want to cry.

I was tired of her koans
And she was worn out discussing
The water. She wasn’t projecting defeat
Onto dried-up teddy bear cholla
Bent over limp as dolls
In their tracks, or tabulating
Every fragrant near-impossibility
And tenuously verdant bed, soon
To be burnt and gone. Death
Expanding everywhere, as always.

No. We’d come for visions of its denial.

Moonsick, we cast our bodies out into the wash
Of solar-powered fists. We felt for what was left.

________

Erin Moon White grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, and currently lives in Boston with her husband and son. She holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. Other work — including fiction and collage— has appeared in Blunderbuss Magazine, Mistress, Shampoo, Death Hums, The Oleander Review, and elsewhere.