If They Have Ears to Hear

“1967” After Larry Levis I hear it mostly in the deep guttural tailpipes of Fords & Chevys revving out of a Friday afternoon high school parking lot in a small New Mexican desert town–Sunset Avenue pulsing like a neck vein that leads to the heart of downtown, where Main Street pumps cars all night stop light to stop light between the A&W and the Tasty-Freeze, engines overheating then finally boiling over in ice-patched two a.m. driveways, cooling down with the ticking sounds of shrinking metal, re-buckling of belts, re-hooking of bras. I’d like to talk to the boys behind the wheels, the girls curled up on humps between bucket seats; I’d like to tell them there is nothing out here in two thousand twelve except what they bring with them, how they should climb out and start packing– the juniper’s needle-leaves, never pressed between pages of a Bible, the scorpion’s breath exhaled through abdominal stigmata, sand swept from sagebrush roots, lifted by the twisting fist of a dust devil, all collecting in luggaged silence–I’d like to tell them how there will always be enough falling brimstone, lakes of fire, flaming bushes, wilted flowers, how there will always be enough gods to punish them for putting their tongues to the warm clay, to turn them to salt for glancing back while walking away, how, when asked “where are you?” “what have you done?” “who told you that you were naked?” what they will need most will be to learn to love the questions.