Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONORAN RADIO, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONORAN RADIO, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Looking at a big moon too long
Last Line: We've colored with blood.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Mexico; Pain; Poverty; Vision; Suffering; Misery


Looking at a big moon too long
rusts the eyes.

The raped girl stood all day naked
in the cold rain holding a plastic Virgin.
Their colors ran into the ground.

Tonight the Big Dipper poured down
its dark blood into the Sea of Cortez,
El Oso Grande, the hemorrhaged bear.

In the supermarket beef feet, chicken feet,
one lone octopus losing its charm.
An old woman named Octavia
who stared at my blind eye
carried out the 100 lb. gunnysack of pintos,
a bag of groceries in the other hand.

Just over the mountains
this other country, despised
and forsaken, makes more sense.
It admits people are complicated,
it tries to ignore its sufferings,
it cheats and loves itself,
it admits God might be made
of stone.

The red bird sits
on the dead brown snake.
The lobo admits its mistake
right after eating
the poisoned calf.

In the forms of death
we are all the same;
destinies are traded
at the very highest levels
in very high buildings
in clear view of the dump-pickers.

My heart and your heart!

The horses are running from flies.
Twenty-three horses run
around and around from the flies
in the big mesquite retaque corral
while five boys watch,
each one smaller
than the next biggest.

In the valley of the Toltecs
the American hunter from Palm Beach
shot one thousand white-winged doves
in a single day, all by himself.

The shark was nearly on shore
when it ate the child in three bites
and the mother kicked the shark in the eye.

The dopers killed the old doctor
in the mountain village,
but then the doctor's patients
stoned the dopers to death,
towing their bodies through town
behind Harley Davidsons.

It is the unpardonable music
stretching the soul
thinner than the skin.
Everyone knows they are not alone
as they suffer the music together
that gives them greater range
for greater suffering.

In the vision
the Virgin who sat in the sycamore
speaks in the voice
of the elegant trogon,
a bird so rare it goes
mateless for centuries.

The lagoon near the oil refinery
outside Tampico caught fire one night.
Everywhere tarpon were jumping
higher than a basketball hoop,
covered with oily flames,
the gill-plates rattling,
throwing off burning oil.

The black dove and white dove
intermarried, producing not brown doves,
but some white doves and black doves.
Down the line, however,
born in our garden a deep-yellow dove
more brilliant than gold
and blind as a bat.
She sits on my shoulder
cooing night songs in the day,
sleeping a few minutes at noon
and always at midnight, wakes
as if from a nightmare
screaming "Guadalupe!"

She said that outside Magdalena
on a mountainside
she counted thirteen guitarists
perched just below a cave
from which they tried to evoke
the usual flow
of blood and flowers.

Up in the borderland mountains
the moon fell slowly on Animas Peak
until it hit it directly
and broke like an egg,
spilling milk on the talus
and scree, sliding in a flood
through a dozen canyons.
The wind rose to fifty knots,
burning the moon
deep into the skin.

In a seaside restaurant
in Puerto Vallarta
a Bosnian woman killed a Serbian man
with a dinner fork,
her big arm pumping the tines
like a jackhammer
before the frightened diners
who decided not to believe it.
She escaped the police net,
fleeing into the green mountains,
fork in hand.

The praying mantis crawled
up the left nostril of our burro
and killed it.

Nightjars and goat suckers,
birds from the far edge of twilight
carrying ghosts from place to place --
Just hitching a ride, the ghosts
say to the birds, slapping
on the harness of black thread.
Even in el norte the whippoorwill's
nest is lined with the gossamer thread
of this ghost harness.

The cow dogs
tore apart
and ate
the pregnant housecat.

The gray hawk
(only twenty pair left in the U.S.)
flew close over
the vermillion flycatcher
perched on the tip
of the green juniper tree.

The waitress in the diner
where I ate my menudo
told me that Christ actually
bled to death. Back in those days
nails were the same as railroad spikes,
and the sun was hot as hell.
She sees the Resurrection
without irony or backspin.
"We are so lucky," she said.
"I couldn't live with all the things
I've done wrong in my life.
I feel better when I'm forgiven."

His dog sneezed
and crawled under a pickup
to get away from the sun.
The guitar and concertina music
swept down the mountainside
from the old cowboy's funeral,
hat and bridle
hanging from a white cross
in a cluster of admirable
plastic flowers.

The ravens are waiting
in the oak at twilight
for the coyotes to come
and open up the dead steer.
The ravens can't break through
cowhide with their beaks
and have been there since dawn
eager for the coyotes to get things started.
There's plenty for everyone.

These black beetles,
big as a thumb,
are locked in dead embrace
either in love or rage.

The bull does not want
to be caught. For five
hours and as many miles
on a hot morning
three cowboys and a half-dozen
cowdogs have worked
the bull toward the pen.
The truck is ready to take
him to the sale. He's known
as a baloney bull, inferring
his destiny: old, used up,
too lazy and tired to mount cows.
Meanwhile he's bawling, blowing
snot, charging, hooking a horn
at the horses, dogs, a stray tree.
Finally loaded, I said good-bye
to his blood-red eyes.
He rumbles, raises his huge neck
and bawls at the sun.

The cow dog licks her cancerous
and bloated teats.
Otherwise, she's the happiest
dog I know, always smiling,
always trying to help out.

I gave the woman seven roses
and she smiled, holding
the bouquet a couple of hours
at dusk before saying good-bye.
The next day I gave her
a brown calf and three chickens
and she took me to bed.
Over her shoulder a rose
petal fell for an hour.

From a thicket full
of red cardinals
burst seven black javelinas,
including three infants
the size of housecats.

There were so many birds
at the mountain spring
they drove one insane
at dawn and twilight;
bushes clotted with birds
like vulgar Christmas trees.
I counted thirteen hundred
of a hundred different kinds,
all frozen in place
when the gray hawk flew by,
its keening voice
the precise weight of death.

Magdalena kept taking off her clothes
for hours until there was nothing left,
not even a trace of moisture on the leather chair.
Perhaps it was because
she was a government employee
and had lost a child.
It was the sleight of her hand.
I never saw her again.

Another bowl of menudo
and she's on a rampage in a black
Guadalupe T-shirt: "We can't keep
working through the used part every day.
Everyone is tired of dope. Day in, day out,
the newspapers are full of dope news,
people are shot dead and not-so-dead,
sent to prison, and both police and criminals
are so bored with dope they weep
day and night, going about their jobs,
living and dying from this stupid dope.
There has to be more than dope. Understand?"

I dreamed here
before I arrived.
Chuck and whir
of elf owls above firelight,
dozens in the black oak
staring down into the fire
beyond which a thousand white sycamore
limbs move their legs into the night.
Sonoran moon gets red
again as she sets in the dust
we've colored with blood.





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