Drought Primer by Sheila Black

We drank blue Kool Aid to turn
our lips blue, wobbled bicycles down
the acequia, watched for the dead things
that lay there, dreaming winter in
every slick of cloud, the cotton fields shedding
their greenish bolls. We knew about dry,
that a town can ebb away like a lick
of water, though we pretended not,
expressionless when the preacher described
another earth about to collide with this
one, nodding when he said the road to hell
looks just like the road to heaven. Whatever
we missed kept returning—dust, hills,
words—palomino, hoodoo, transparency.
Cruel that we loved most to say the words
we no longer needed. We lay down on
our cracked beds, visualized the flower
of water, which was in us all the time.

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Sheila Black is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Iron, Ardent (Educe Press, 2017). She co-edited Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The New York Times and elsewhere. She divides her time between San Antonio, TX, and Washington, D.C.

Photo: Oscar Keys