like a ghost or a short, quick river
Martin Harrison
Replace one water with another:
the spectre of drought in Vegas:
imagine dry showers, being sanded of dirt, like
in the dystopian movies we’ve seen:
filth an extra skin to be
abraded, the porcelain of beauty mags
now only available to those
hermetically sealed in, away
from any megapolis:
the stop-start of the border river—that once
swept illegals away with its force, now
dammed into walllessness
—a stand-in for the future of water
restrictions “back home”: the dry creek bed
of childhood the longest
deprivation:
on talkback, news of a town committed
to underbid the restrictions enough
to donate the excess to their botanical gardens—
at last a true collaboration: the future
of beauty:
flow evaporates to standing water: to
ruffles the surface’s satin sheen,
reconjures the old crinkled shot silk of it: abundance
of light, still unfurled across its surface:
the surface, memory, shrinks