hosho mccreesh | las cruces, nm

Cabezon In Front Of A Thunderhead | Painting by Hosho McCreesh

Las Cruces, NM

The ancients say that this desert burned for 30 winters,
that there are tress older than the white man’s Jesus…

In broken English he tells me of his sister,
her belly swollen 8 months,
her blue-eyed boy clinging to her leg,
seems there was a terrible man looking for her,
–a scorpion scuttling across the bone-white gypsum–
she left last Christmas, to hide somewhere up North.
“Son putas justas, putas mexicanas…”
just Mexican whores, he says,
the cops will do nothing,
they care nothing for what’s right,
no one cares enough to stop it…

This is bad country here, this valley of fire, these badlands,
here to Juarez, to Nogales, the bodies of burning prostitutes
blooming in the desert, these strange & beautiful red flowers,
lasting only a few hours then wilting to coalsmoke soot.

“Malpais,” says the man when
I try to ask him another question,
“Malpais, senor…” he says
& then he will
say

no

more.

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