This parasol keeps us dry
from the fat beads of truth
that rain down from paintings
hung on the walls of her skull.

Space is filled
with the dust of old battles.

Coyotes know
a meal when they see it:
a rabbit or a squirrel.

Cold tongues sing
of a Cyclops whose lone eye
burns like a sun.

Farmers know the land
is their charred flesh.

A hot dome bakes
the ribs of dead cattle.

The sparks of her mind
allow a would-be hero
to see things others cannot.
Or is it the mescaline?

Mounted with nails
that split palms
into countries of pain
her legend leaves
broken wings flapping
this way and that.

Some say her compass
points its finger northward.
Some say her answers
live in hands that have clawed
their way through alluvial deltas.
Hands that shoo our own
dry meanings
from the roads to reality.

Her stuttering
mouth rages incessantly
like a metronome bent
from the rhythm of now.
Sky is her mother.
Her father, what will remain
of our soil when we are done.