It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky,
like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear.
And there, not the promised land, but barbwire and barbwire
with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk
after a bat said la sangre del saguaro nos seduce. Sometimes
I wake and my throat is dry, so I drive to botanical gardens
to search for red fruit clutched to saguaros, the ones at dusk
I threw rocks at for the sake of slashing hunger.
But I never find them here. These bats say speak English only.
Sometimes in my car, that viscous red syrup
clings to my throat, and it’s a tender seed toward my survival:
I also scraped needles first, then carved those tall torsos
for water, then spotlights drove me and thirty others dashing
into palos verdes, green-striped trucks surrounded us,
our empty bottles rattled and our breath spoke with rust.
When the trucks left, a cold cell swallowed us.
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