This is my first published poem. I had submitted it to Sigma Tau Delta's first ever poetry contest in April 2014, where it was judged and hand-picked by award-winning poet Patty Seyburn. Aside from the prestige and recognition, I will get an opportunity to read at the next Sigma Tau Delta event with Patty Seyburn, as well as "acknowledgement" in the next 2014 issue of The Northridge Review.
Of dusty footprints and stray hairs
Shed across the carpets and gray chairs
Of an empty Flagstaff airport.
Scatter these across the Grand stretch
Of your conjoined, communal womb,
Tracing out the cracked and craggy lips
Of your North and South Rim. Perhaps one of them will catch on
To the coattails of a meandering breeze
And carry itself to the birds’ nest
Outside the window of that Sedona house,
The one I saw reflected back at me
In the aperture of a bad camera,
Blurred between the rays of a waning sun
Where a pale face hovered, smiling. Arizona, I send you my love, wrapped
In a sheath cut from my left ventricle.
Lay it beside its brothers -
I’ve sent three others ahead of him -
And plant them deep and narrow
Into the wintery breast of Oak Creek,
Where familiar Tempe fingertips
Will tend to it - a mother, a matron. A piece of me for every piece of you,
Delicately plucked from the scarlet stems
Of the pale sprite’s young plumage -
I promise to pay it all back,
Every mouth noise and skin scent
That I kept clutched in my pants pockets
And tucked away in the cubbyholes
Underneath my chewed-up fingernails. Arizona, I’ve dug a grave for myself
Among your snow-laced shrubberies
For the day I lay upon your coarse dirtbeds
And become the blanket you wear year-round.
I won’t be there for a long time, I think -
I’ve got too many sets of good shoes
With me, still waiting to be worn out -
But a new pair means I’m only getting closer. Maybe you’ll remember the tips of my toes
When I sink them into your navel,
Or recall the shape my shadow makes
As it swept over clay adobes and mammoth bones,
Or maybe, when I touch down on the graying runway,
It won’t be you, but your sprite child instead,
Waiting for me to spill out of the terminal’s mouth
Like a word longing to be heard.
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