issue 6, 1990
Across the Line
Tucson/Nogales
For a few days in August we returned together
to places we’d loved separately, long before
I eased myself onto you, facing away,
so inside you felt a silky backwardness.
Our bellies ripe and dripping, tender wedges
of cantaloupe feeding each other…
We drove south to a country where aromas alone
called us in off the street. A roadside
vendor squeezed green lemons over a gordita,
the meat shine sticking with us even after sucking.
We asked the way to the Cavern, long since
burned and no longer serving
tequila with a worm
or the soup of turtles.
You dropped folding money in the paper cup
of the high-cheeked woman
wrapping god’s eyes
around twigs of the velvet mesquite.
La Sirena, heavy breasts above the waterline,
I turned the cards for loteria:
El Diablito, preparing a corner, El Nopal,
prickly paddles studded with thick purple fruit.
To settle the dust, we sucked fibrous paletas
of mango, the sweet chew of piña,
our tongues alive along the frostiness, licking
our fingers, licking
what our fingers held. Thunderclouds
ganged up over Sonoita’s wild grasses—
switchblade rumbles of rainwater flashing
dry arroyos, el corozón
shot through, the quick, involuntary
muscle in the chest, the storm
shocking the broken earth,
shaking for the crack of an instant
the certainty of the sky, that storm
pulsing on inside us,
underground rivers swollen, refreshed.
————
Author’s Statement — Rain in the desert, life-giving rain. Life-giving lovemaking, essential bonds between those who love, who become one with earth, sky, water. And a border that no longer exists—a border people could cross to share a meal and an afternoon, an open border with people welcome on both sides.
Peggy Shumaker served as Alaska State Writer Laureate and as the Rasmuson Foundation's Distinguished Artist. She’s the author of eight books of poetry, including Cairn, new and selected. Her lyrical memoir is Just Breathe Normally. Professor emerita at University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA at PLU. She serves on the boards of Storyknife, the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation, and the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prizes. Shumaker edits Boreal Books (an imprint of Red Hen Press), the Alaska Literary Series at Univ. of Alaska Press, and is contributing editor for Alaska Quarterly Review.