In the bleached heat of day, I awaken

from a dream of wildfires burning in

God’s palm, stolen land stitched together by

charred scars—awaken to another dream

where I am embedded, dislocated

soaked dense: an amnion for the living

& dead. I lay afloat with hollowed bones

wait for someone to take me out to dry

under the errant sky & become air

& light like the fragrance of sage, which dies

in streets. O to live for dusk when the sun

cracks on the saguaro spines in hues of wounds

& I, prickly-pear red, weep as the night

descends over the mountains—an empty

chapel—where my throat thirsts for communion

to consume the softest body & be

consumed so we are whole again, full like

the moon I swallow with a hungering

mouth of obscurity. Run with the hare

escape the coyotes, let this body

be destroyed, husk & hide, where my rapt eyes

see through the empty ram’s skull, a mirage

a copper haze others called death, or dawn.