East Van Buren
After they wake coughing from ditches
Nest-like blankets and plastic bags
Desert sifting sky and contrail Xs after
Another night shift and minimart to
Needle malt liquor’s psychotic
Droll of fuck you fuck this fuck another
Arrow’s arrival into that fat swan
Near the corporate campus pond like us not yet
Dying like a shiv comes the night unhinged
Sunnyslope
Gutted green cable box graffiti
kept breaking the news all summer
I was one part halogen one part ghost and you
were about to blow
town your drowned sister’s photograph
buckled orange from six years
of swamp cooler gas above the sink
fever skinned its dreamer
or so the swaying power lines said
one of us wrecked our car I
won’t say who leaving us to
walk chlorinated alleys
in Walgreens flip flops to the center
of the universe the Do Drop Inn
where a sign read your
bartender is COWBOY BE NICE
red and yellow tire repair shop
signage ate through fence slats
Harry Dean Stanton’s cameo on Bonanza
cranked loud enough to lose teeth
our dour circumference an all-but infinite feeling
snaking fires their foil-like surfaces
of apartment courts named ironwood ocotillo quail birch
principalities brightening above
liquor stores acrid burnt places
swing shift nurses finishing up sex workers
clustered around a single pay-as-you-go phone
yelling we love you Harry
to which the frailest voice in Maricopa County
said girls you know I know you do
to which you asked me what’s the difference
between us and nature?
your dog was by the bathroom door
tearing the squeaker heart out of
a plush Mister Happy
COWBOY told us don’t let him eat that
The difference is we’re paying customers
if found
I wrote in my pink notebook
please burn
while reading on the bus
brutalized later by the smallest moon
in dirtiest dawn
the air around your sleeping heft
beneath the oscillating fan
grew thick and scarce
you told me in your sleep
there’s not a moment
with you
I don’t plot
my escape
Miles Waggener is the author of four volumes of poetry: Phoenix Suites, Sky Harbor, Desert Center, and most recently Superstition Freeway, published by The Word Works of Washington DC. He has been the recipient of The Washington Prize as well as individual grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Nebraska Arts Council.
Write On, Downtown 