By AJ Parker
when i was young, our house backed up
to pure, unadulterated desert
if we walked deep enough,
past the rattlesnake holes,
there was a big rubber tire
and a rusted red truck
filled with bullet holes.
it was my favorite thing to see
Saguaro skeletons laid in wait, their stems
riddled with holes woodpeckers carved out
nightly Sonoran sunsets conducted their funeral arrangements
decades early, since they’re supposed to live a hundred years,
until one day they lose an arm, a leg, and all their flowers,
food for zealous critters, as the decay at their base worsens,
it becomes half as big, a third, a fourth,
until the beasts are standing on a peg.
then they topple over and die once and for all,
tired of clinging to negligent beads of buried water
we’d return from the procession,
a spindle or two wiser, joyful from our exploits
now they’ve built houses on the wasteland
and filled the sand with succulents
and i wonder where that truck went
when nobody wanted it anymore
and what it was like to die
years before you were dead
A.J. Parker grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, then spent some time on the East Coast trying to make up for all that water she lost. She’s won journalistic awards from the CSPA, the AIPA, and the NSPA. Now, she’s venturing into the literary world. Her work has been published in Feminist Food Journal, Ink in Thirds, and more. You can follow her at @ashleyjadeparker on Instagram/Threads or @ashleyjadeparke on X/Twitter. Website: https://ashleyjadeparker.wixsite.com/author