Midsummer Marital With Creosote Bush & Tattoo Poem by Martha Zweig

Can't expect too much of a person. little or no
telling why. Well enough, left alone,
tends to wander off into that scapegoat's
aura who staggers around the desert's
volatile prospects in & out of the shapes- two-thirds
of them feminine- of sin, & snatches at dry
shrubs & prickers, bleats among bleating husks.
Things' shadows rise up inflammatory.

Don't be a churl, darling. It's too hot today to live
any more or less. Over-bothered already
to put in an appearance. Freak of humidity,
vapor off of that ruminant out there,
consorts with mordant spirits to visit our
bodies' pits. Synopsis: eight prognostic instances & each
one's opposite swelter in the mirage. Rub me out? - but I'd just
as soon cooperate, strip, blot into your oily rag

as not. Adore me or not as the dead giveaway steals
about the facial features. Or stop me once you've never
heard the end of our point-by-point
reconciliation: all-but-certain atrophy. The sweat's
in the subcutaneous text. Ultraviolet limns the script's
initials as ornamental beasts until I look illegible
even in my own words, & then whatever they say you concur.
What passes for time around here, I'm telling you.