THE DESERT A window opens between trees. yellow. leaking. the ocean has fashioned a cave into which all oceans disappear. into caves that situate dreams in daring. the ocean climbs animals shed ribbons of tape That is where we stopped. Families torn in half, in thirds, two-thirds, three-fifths, in spring, without consideration but swiftness
THE DESERT
The young woman had a clear plastic tube in her left arm
her vein. She needed it removed. She pulled it out
a few inches
to show me
it was rooted to her shoulder.
that was the extent of her medical need
We stood in the doorway of a crowded gymnasium.
No one stopped to acknowledge her.
The crowd’s indifference was threatening her stigma,
There were many of her, or one
of many,
with similar needs
that could have been addressed in minutes
but the oversaturation was taken for granted
then where would the young women go?
I told the woman I could help her,
let me find someone to help me help her
it was the day after tomorrow,
everyone gathered in the gymnasium
with lighter, more mesh like clothing
everyone’s motion that of people waiting
for a ceremony to begin
a rally
with roses
no landscape Fireworks turning white
embers draining lips
and the long, drawn sleep
of people who lumped their head against thigh like bark
for the association of warmth
against 27º
in the desert, January CONTINENTAL PALMS
Masho surrounded by green, Everywhere
is green Masho says.
He pats his head Too hot, he says.
No green to escape No escape
There is green on top of the mountain, I say
Foolishly
The mountain looks brown No cloud in the sky
As if to change elevation
is escape
Masho’s green is having an outside
sending his sons into the safety
of outside
+
Refugees sitting around a swimming pool
patches of old, fumigated atmosphere
on the bottom
+
I help Masho carry cans, paper, boxes,
heads of lettuce, fruits, chicken
up the stairs, to the table.
Too much chicken. Frozen
heaped on their table.
one table. half the kitchen.
The chicken did not fit in
the freezer
They would have to cook it right away
to make room.
one couch, one TV,
the children, boys, share a bed, the couch
Occasionally a limb
would get lost.
Nothing on the walls. The pool surrounded by plants
Medicine in the oleander,
for when old men stop speaking, lose their ability to speak,
and shopping carts riding the walls
+
Green is home, Ethiopia
Masho smiles
He does not want the mountain the valley
where the cloud
gets caught on a rock
He means where it is cool
where his sons will recognize
where they came from
as where they are. Green,
voices
keeping it watered. THE DESERT
A cow wandered into the desert
was thirsty tried eating simple white flowers
placed its tongue on a thorn saw the sun
reel against its white forehead,
A dog leapt over a fence
through the tree
with mint green leaves
over the church over the man hauling fish in a net
homeless men eating sausage and toast
The dog soaked in the sun was
crushed. in the weeds
Because the dog had blue eyes and was faithful,
tended the loneliness of a man fashioned out of a stump
Because the dog had blue eyes, and was faithful
gifted a man wounded with the black stumps of earth
with a reason
to skate through the doorway
he died was found stiff
like a chair
on the side of the highway
The man cried for days, weeks
threatened to grow out of the dog’s blue eyes
sprang from a hole
in the darkness sequestered
along the edges of motion DEATH OF THE FLOWER
There used to be a flower here, I said
Pink and white
semblances of the plant’s hidden ingredient garment
semblances of the passing of the storm pink and white
partners pachyderms? No.
the flowers did not cool did not become retrograde,
fell off blew away?
became dust
+
The flowers have left us, that is their possession,
what remains of us
looking at where the flowers were
bright had souls
their souls possessed leaving,
as a station of infidelity wanton rooms of infidelity
+
the flowers spilled over a wall
stacked tightly with bodies
people hiding people sleeping
against each other noses pressed into necks,
people don’t fit like bottles They drown in
becoming
the wall pink and white
once spilled over, braised,
and decayed
in the gutter,
bitter alloy so strong and unlucky
were hunted, run into
the coldest bridges beneath
stargazy
+
There used to be warm meals
sprouting out of the wall, down the face
where the ears are, where bedlam goes
nameless,
people silent but struggling
to perceive their bodies
as if in a movie
set in a graveyard
an air of piracy settles on
+
bodies hum They remember
with their teeth, their toes, ancient seas
that evaporated before they were made,
on both sides of the wall
miniature suns ratted hair
limbs protruding below
the field of view
of people rushing home
to embrace it hopelessly,
drained out
+
Last night, we saw the river. We were driving
over a bridge, turned around
to see it
again, then turned around to see it again.
It returned, was flowing
towards sunset. THE DESERT
A man sat beneath a tree.
The tree was dry, its leaves hammered teeth
the shadows too were dry and hot
the sun connected directly
The entire wash looked like it had served fire
seasons ago.
[The man] sitting between black roots.
was lost, or looking
to lose what was following him
to the desiccated end of a[n] artery
monitored The man
had been walking two days, five days
was stuck to the ground.
had a toothbrush in his pocket.
hung his teeth on a limb The toothbrush in its packaging
+
Three men stood on a hill.
they had been walking three days
two days before that, months before that,
The hill was a short promontory
on which white moons and animals totems of succor and attraction
inscribed Mirages of these exact men
on every cactus
between
the hill and a room with A/C
Are we in Kentucky? they asked.
How many borders do we have to cross
+
In the middle of a wash dry
except for the vibrating head of air
above the sinking water table, a white man in his 80s,
with a pat of sun on his nose
reciting a poem by Antonio Machado:
Caminante, no hay camino, the poem
the musician turned into
a song,
before his hands were cut off
and lobbed into the trash
outside the stadium, all the stadiums
+
To sink through the ground of America
is to meet the legions who have been buried fall through them
lapse underground,
commingle, in its original arrangement, The world
above, the world we think we love is
scar tissue •••
Brandon Shimoda’s most recent books include The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019) and The Desert (The Song Cave, 2018). He is currently writing a book on the ongoing afterlife/ruins of Japanese American incarceration, passages of which have appeared in/on The Asian American Literary Review, Hyperallergic, Lit Hub, The Nation, and The New Inquiry. He lives in the desert.