To do without the body’s
basic appetite primes one’s other
wants. Starving and
sand-colored, a desert hides its
critters, ribbed and moon-
thirsty in their lairs. Named after
the prayer, Joshua
trees raise their worms, moths and
woodpeckers as supplications, equal
and unpretentious where, without rain,
water from dew or animal
carcass would do, where death, viscous,
redistributes and is
sparing. Opened wide, my mouth is filled
with mouths, rowed teeth the unstruck
rocks of honey. God, my body’s
lost weight isn’t loss for vanity: the cactus
learns thirst in swells and splinters.
Some nights abound in darkness, others, light-
pricked, watch the crawl beneath stars, fixed
and eternity-startled.
