Lemonade 

The heat that soaked all day
into the Safeway asphalt parking lot
is rising into starlight
and the artificial glow
from street lamps and the passing
traffic steering
from nine o’clock to ten, in which
all shoppers have the same
yellower than human
colour to their skin. They’ve run
out of cookies for a late night
snack, coffee for tomorrow’s
breakfast, eggs, chips, beer,
while I just want
some lemonade to wash down
the dry and dusty air. Only two

checkouts are open, so waiting
grants time enough to read the front pages
on the tabloids for sale, featuring
photographs of celebrity cellulite
and speculation as to who
among the famous
will have the next obituary, stressing
that a glamorous life counts more
than a poor one. I slide
a credit card along the groove
to pay three dollars forty-nine,
bag the plastic bottle, and leave
the air conditioning behind. A woman
takes a wide turn as she steps
in from McDowell,
declaiming as she goes
 
a series of complaints, whose details
point invisible fingers
at the system that surrounds her.
She’s loud and the quality
of her voice makes clear
that she isn’t speaking into a hidden phone
or addressing a specific

person; she’s on fire somewhere
deep inside, and when
she enters the store there’s no letting
up in her tone. She’s a wake-up call
before anyone has gone to sleep;
the night’s first secret to emerge
fully dressed and ready
to parade along the junk food aisles
and city streets

saying in her madness
what quiet people only think.

Chiricahua Skies
 Winter Blue 

A shock of light runs through
the dry grass on a slope
that leads from oak to yucca
whose every pod is nestled
in the colour left behind
when the ice has cracked
and peeled away from the sky.

 Summer Black

A cry from the mountain’s core
takes form and appears
as a mass above it.
Along the road into the canyon
cattle guards flash
their cold metal smiles
at the afternoon headlights
on every car crossing them.

Studies of the Peak

The first version is a broad
stroke of green acrylic
beneath a sky beginning to break
apart, with a small patch of rock
painted into the clouds. Returning
to the view, it sits
more firmly on the earth
even when portrayed
as flying through the white space
the canvas surrounds it with.
Later, angles have become curves
as shadows flow across them
and slip into the canyon
on the far side of the light. In another
season, a calm warmth
prints itself against
endless blue. Even the monsoon
doesn’t change the composition
when the colours run
from ochre in the foothills to
a black edge in the rain. After
being studied for so long
for its rise and fall
the mountain rests comfortably
in the eye, and a wash
of new growth softens it
as a storm recedes. Every jutting
stone is so familiar, that even
when mist lies thick enough
to make a monochrome
of all that lies behind it, the image
impresses itself as one unerring
layer upon another, grey
on grey, suggestion and whispers
in the oncoming cold.

Page 3

© Copyright, 2012, David Chorlton.
All rights reserved.