Overstand

Santa Fe is a strange place that one strongly loves and hates.


Overstand 5/27

Santa Fe is a penny
A penny burning in moonlight
From here is it a puddle oozing down the foothills
Gray water filling the Rio Grande, flooding farms
Farmlands that are filling with locusts with man faces
Doll-like crawlers wearing green saris
Hopping clipping the wind and running the rain

Santa Fe is a brown square
A square poking out its sides
Lurching towards an ocean never seen
Again with water filling one thing emptying another
The ebb of some copper moon holding the last fall grains
A rectangle nursing burned grasses
Suckling arroyos

Santa Fe is a while
A whole sinking into mesa
Sharp sides pulsing the horizon
A gouge in landscape huge stroke of black coal
Against the redding night
It hops on all fours and calls like a whore
Her eyes done in spirals

Santa Fe is a fetish
A fetish doll on a shelf telling stories
Little clay-faced babies sitting on its lap
It whispers like a barn owl the hair on your neck stands
Feels like a shadow over the sun
A sudden rush of cold in the dry beds
A supporting hand on your neck while you sleep