Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, INTESTINE OF TAOS, by JANE MILLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

INTESTINE OF TAOS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The dirt part of the road is five miles
Last Line: Cool summer night in the desert; boulevard of stars.
Subject(s): Deserts; Food & Eating; Love - Complaints; New Mexico


The dirt part of the road is five miles.
Left up short steep hill, left. Second definite Y
road winds round, road follows pole with two black arrows.
Where there is only one.
The first time you're frightened,
then you can't live without it.
Several windmills confessing I need you, once or twice.
But it does not happen twice.
O ocean,
I'm sorry I met someone
when I was with someone else. Straw in the walls

and thunder every afternoon.
When it is noon,
the poor pooling of men in the state penitentiary.
Along the onyx leg of the drive to Albuquerque,
painted cars and nails along the freeway,
lone view, the dirt road and the tiny branch.
But this is not that branch, nor sun in the afternoon.

This is not heat. This is the brain walled,
the church at Ranchos de Taos
exorcized fifteen angles in the sun.
Wind on the corrugated metal eyes, on the hoarse
stalled motorcycles, the motels of love.
On a Saturday, on a Thursday, all afternoon.
Violent beauty, is that what beauty is about?

passed psycho pickup trucks,
a windmill on the right,
this is that dirt part of the road,
whether love,
in certain cases, mightn't be superfluous.
And immediately after that ardor, this technicolor plum
hastened to that dusk, those friends, one other.

It is unusually cool for July, not for a moment have I forgotten
the infinite tiny poem bolting the arroyo,
the fable of the red,
the drench of the white,
the felony of the yellow,
the cleavage of the black

cool summer night in the desert; boulevard of stars.





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