Outside the Gallup city limits
there is a lot of dry space,
not the ruddy stuff
but a real sandpaper effigy.
Great ghetto canyons ,
trains lugging through ‘em.
Gophers, popping outta their
mud slum whatsit’s galore;
imitating us, as we’re crisscrossin’
the interstate all the way
to the border. Teasin’ us it is,
that death trap;
the goddamn whore,
I can’t forget it, even
for a minute.
Then Arizona! Quick as a jack rabbit.
& just as barren, but with a trading post
cropped outta the desert right smack
in the middle of everything , so you
can’t miss it: a fiberglass teepee, painted
up in wildlife animisms; I don’t know.
How goddamn ridiculous. We stop
here a while and chew gum.
I walk inside, get slapped by
air-conditioning and hope someone
will yell at me for being
a hot sweaty mess and not buying anything
but no one does, and it pisses me off.
There’s a raincloud that looks
damn ominous,
just hanging offa the far end of a mesa.
I just sit and watch it.
About one in the afternoon,
I say, well shit.
We’re in Arizona.
then we get on our bicycles
and I stick the gum to my tire
for good luck. We keep on,
on the left side of the interstate,
important only because we’re not
on it, yet. Thank god.
Actually, it’s gorgeous out here,
and quiet, too, though the interstates
a murmuring beast that cuts through it
with bulging arteries—you get the imagery.
But we are to the left of it, and it’s beautiful.
Us, and our last leg of old ’66, through the Rez;
the clouds hanging behind us just dim enough
to cast a boorish purple bruise on the mesa façade.
We are in a high spot, and to the left of us,
the landscape falls off into a vast basin.
Behind, those buttes; in front just looks
so damn hot, and sweltering:
the road, a tall man swaggering,
a mirage if you will.
A barbed barrier between us
and the highway
to make amends with my nerves.
And those impending clouds,
cool; that’s the crux of it:
you don’t feel hot out here
as it is a dry heat, but you see it.
That blessed shadow,
a respite in its trickery.
