There’s nothing left to burn in Arizona.
The blacktop’s been cooked soft, and each dropped dribble
melts a bit of the rubber basketball and the Second-grader
launching long-shots like Jordan – Trying to make it rain.

The clouds look like they want to - They hang;
heat-waves from the highways meshing into a gray
that promises relief. And none comes.
The evening’s acrylics flake away,
leaving blue to go black, so the sun can breathe
behind the horizon.

The state will not sleep this night. Exposed, self-conscious
under the stars, the ground lies cracked and nude.
Chalk-dust streets and dead grass spoil its surface
like age-lines and moles.

A Weatherman props windows open to tempt the breeze that rattles.
Rattling the leaves that hang from the palms
and blowing the bone-hard blacktop bone-dry.
He dreams of flooding:

Of the rain that comes, angry
whipping the hard packed earth and
roaring like the towers of men falling.
Tempest suddenly thrown--thrashing sand alive.

Breathe! Pockmarked and scarred and screaming,
still breathe—and beat! beat now, reluctant heart pumping
harsh pulses, heavy in the gutters; pouring off of rooftops
and pounding hard against the scuffed glass windows. Bleed and weep
waves that run in wild rivulets. Gargle days and days of silent dust
then spit them out to fill the streets.


Awake, He chokes on sand.