FREEZER BURN: Palm Springs, 117 Degrees

Published in the summer, 2011 issue (#3) of the Inlandia Literary Journal, hot off the press. a wonderful, new online journal.

http://inlandiajournal.org/2011/08/12/ruth-nolan-3/

september isn’t
for ice cream

august cripples
the dogs

july sticks
to itself

june, a time
to lower blinds

we lived on
cool tile floors

four months
in a row last year

grocery shopping
at midnight,

sleeping
through the day

our love
boiled over

when the air
conditioner broke

down and the
frozen pizza thawed

you took my
car keys and

in slow-mo you
knocked over

three 
orange 
cones
then melted 
into the road


The ILJ issue #3 has some excellent pieces this issue, including one by one of my favorite, Inland Empire-based prose writers, Kathleen Alcala, whose work also graced the pages of "Inlandia: A Literary Journey through southern California's Inland Empire," published in 2006. The issue also features a "spotlight focus, Inland Writers Workshop, downtown Riverside," which I've led since summer, 2008, for Dr. Harki Dhillon, who writes poetry & prose, and is a longtime member of the workshop. I'm happy to see cover art by my artist friend, Cindy Rinne & fiction from another of my workshop members, Juanita Mantz Rodriguez, who I believe also attends the Inlandia-Palm Springs workshop, as well. Enjoy!

Desert Home Diaspora

photograph "Bees One: Turtle Mountains Wilderness Near the Rock Altar and Aztec Well, Mojave Desert" by Ruth Nolan copyright (c) 2011 by Ruth Nolan

If you could call me one more time,
I’d say I’m looking at a raven sky,

that the California desert isn’t Israel,
though our constellations are the same,

I’d say that I’m overjoyed by pink
wildflower clouds in the garden, it’s

April, and the tiny green oranges
you fingered grow bigger on the trees

I’d say that the dog I love is still
healing from his back injury,

that I made a bit of extra cash from
selling the didgeridoo and shotgun,

that the needled Palo Verde trees
are sprayed with yellow designer flowers,

that the red-throated Costa’s hummingbirds
suckle white sugar syrup from my feeder,

that the sunflower seeds you scattered
with one toss of the hand are now sprouting,

that the crows are occupying the tallest wasp-
filled palm, though you once beat them all away,

I swim to the bottom of the deep end of the
pool these torched summer nights, crying stars,

pretending that I haven’t been forsaken
in the promised land, that I don’t need you.


by Ruth Nolan, copyright (c) 2011 by Ruth Nolan
forthcoming published in “Raven and Crow Anthology”,2011, editor Cynthia Anderson.

for the one who died
halfway between desert and Inland Empire
in the heart of the Badlands
right before Easter Day 2010

Desert Rose: (re)membering memory, here, for your lost flower

DESERT ROSE: (re)membering memory, for your lost flower

I am ancient geoglyph
Trace my blossom in the sand
Where Kokopelli lures me
To follow you everywhere

I’m your white desert rose,
Touch me, I’m from
A million years ago,
Pick me up, I’ll dissolve

I am water everywhere
Intersecting the desert,
Bringing life to the fat shores
Of humanity’s loaded seams

I am wind, then smoke,
Blowing through empty rooms
Flowing through your dreams
Then, standing still

I am drum
Loaning my face
To your beating heart
Your rake’s caress

I am rain and fog
Drifting down from clouds
Unable to fill the thirst
in your searching soul

I am thunder,
You are storm
You are standing still
I am second wind

I am the open mine
You penetrated deeply into me
leaving birthmarks
across my weathered skin

I am barbed wire fence
Circling what you left behind
Crumbling into an empty void
carved out w/your shovel's caress

I am pyramid
rocks on a lonely hill
talisman to goddesses & gods
you would call me Sphinx

I am silent, I am loud
I am meteor, I am sin
I am love, I am apple
I inhabit white sunstroke

Always waiting
Always alone
Always a memory
About to be lost
About to be re-born

I am an old pipe dream
Your last feathered song

I am water in the desert,
I am a fluted memory of land


photograph & poem
by Ruth Nolan

photograph: copy of flower two, by Ruth Nolan
copyright (c) 2011 by Ruth Nolan

poem: Desert Rose (re)rembering memory
copyright (c) 2011 by Ruth Nolan