poem: lately i have been thinking about heat

and the way the desert, as an idea,
sits apart and reacts to you. it is watching to see if you
will make it out alive. or if you are one of the dead girls strung
up first economically and then aggressively or if you are
the red stain left across the hands and the
altar. as long as i am the one written about and not the critic
i am not damned. as long as i am the one watching the plane
split into the wet mouth of the sky her mother tongue her palpitations
and not the pilot, not that attempted lift of the subliteral,
than i am not damned. the desert watches, it chews me, it says
are you going to make it, this time
or you again like the drained out clocks draped over the trees of my arm
and ready for sleep.

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