What do you call yourself at night
when only the bats & nightshade
can hear you?
Girl, girl, girl, sometimes
sparrow, lichen, monster,
always child. Thing of the wild,
beetle and lizard, thistle or burr,
a knot of weeds. A sound
like the clearing of a throat,
a wheeze of air caught
in the chest cavity, an echoing.
Most nights, I like the names
that hurt the most: daughter,
daughter, mother, oil, home.
What scares you in the easy
heat of a Tuesday morning?
A river's syntax changes
when it dries into fragments,
end stops, mud, arroyos,
death tracts, a quieting.
When will you be happy?
Agave neomexicana, the century
plant, blooms death in a single
red stalk. Red as in robin's wing
or fire that eats mountains. Red
as lipstick or warning sign or flare
gun. A balloon limp in the spines.
of a creosote. Panties crumpled
on the floor of a bedroom or red
as the tides in our strangled estuaries,
the coast's last spectacular flush.
What is the shape of time?
Sometimes, when the day's
just starting to burn, a thrasher
slices through what happened
and what could be, leaves chemtrails,
featherlike, behind. The past self
curls around each wing the way
space does, the way each future
self is just a breath away. Here,
I too am without. Less body, less
rib or marrow. All my breath,
singing. Look, a crow has the day
in her beak. Regret dangling
from her talons like a dead snake.
What is and who
do you love?
Let me tell you about the roots
like veins spidering towards
the thought of water, roots
that gentle through silt and sand,
the thrum of want, roots like
gnarled knuckles bloodied
against concrete. No, wait,
let me begin again. The ponderosa
outside our bedroom window
died of thirst before we moved
in. Its hollowed body chewed
through, collapsed.
CAITLIN FERGUSON is interested in writing ecopoetry, especially concerning the internal and external landscapes and the Anthropocene. Her work has appeared in Twyckenham Notes, the Colorado Review, Cathexis NW Press, Split Rock Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she lives in Las Cruces, NM where she is an adjunct professor and a bookseller.
