Water, this is the first revision, that we brought water for him in time
No, that he’d had it himself, he carried a river on his back and drank
from it that whole walk through the desert, and we only found his
body because he’d decided to leave it behind
Because he was an angel, briefly inhabiting a body on earth, so there is
no one to miss him, no one with bloodshot eyes waking up every day
to Where is he where is he is he alive, the wind moving the blades of
the old fan around in the window
He was a gift to the bees and birds and little bats that come through
Arizona in the spring, little bats, one on each of his fingers
Third revision, he still has fingers
And the part about the sheriff and the men he brought, they were just
boys, let them forget how they threw the bag of him up on the rocks
And the white flowers blossoming in the city now in April, make them
stop
A doctor walked that wash three weeks ago and tells me that she found
more bones, she found a jaw, and there was already a jaw, so include
this, too, that it was not one man there, but two, that is, one man and a
jaw
My mother says some trees in Kingston are turning green now with the
early heat, but others answer only to the length of days
Do we have to keep the following: panic, thirst
And the stars overhead like white women
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Margaree Little’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Bloom and Beloit Poetry Journal. She is a recent graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and has worked as an assistant editor in the program’s archival collection of craft lectures. Originally from Rhode Island, she lives in Tucson, Arizona.
