Hillcrest Drive, Albuquerque

There was the front walk, hot cement
leading past the pebbled landscape
a fringe of scratchy junipers
with their blue poison orbs.
There were the double front doors
of dark wood which might open
to a living room
where no one lived, arched
and obedient furniture matching
the imperious dining room table
whose water rings boiled
our mother to a rage.
There were sliding glass doors
along the concrete back porch
where we could see the neighbor’s yard
and their small springing dog
on his thin tether
whom they surely loved more
than our parents loved us.
There was the fall of seventh grade
when mononucleosis wore me down
to utter nothing, closed my throat
and flung me into sweaty nightmares
one where I saw my sleeping sister
sawed in half on wooden planks
by anonymous workers
in the neighbor’s garden.
I fevered awake at dawn and stood
a long time staring through the paned glass
to the vacant day outside, everyone’s yard
cool and quiet, the relentless New Mexican sun
not yet burning the day into submission.
And me, in a large empty house
all of thirteen and shivering
with a strangled swollen neck
powerless to swallow my own spit.

((forthcoming) reprinted with kind thanks from The Portland Review)