Mexican men tip irrigation hoses into each adjacent hole to be filled, spade tipped to save their backs for when the land will demand they bend again. fields arrayed in trays, scraped with rows and placed upon dirty counters to lamp beneath the incessant sun. monotonous swathes of khaki. middle-aged Mexican women pack sysco boxes with plastic peanuts to Styrofoam the journey of something that was pulled. apprehensive cows stare at what enters through the gate pointing exotic equipment at their faces, numbered tags dangling from their ears. an angry wind hurls its abuses at the grass again & again. its rage ripping what it can, down in the dirt feeling for anything that could be thrown, tossing topsoil in an epic tantrum. wild grass, nearly as dry as bone, knits the earth down. around here what won’t stay down gets flung. at the end of the end you can hear the sky at the end of the dirt road where the clouds are ground to dust, knuckled beneath the horizon is scissored along this longest hem, in this insistently demarcated land, as far as eye will allow light to bend, this eye far, this sky scaped equal to and competing with the land that runs alongside like a herding dog that won’t give an inch. you can hear the sky at the end of the dirt road is a scar where the chest of nowhere was pried open & probed. dirt scar parts the dry itchy wave of grass, wind beaten & abused until you are lost and tenacious inside its toil crusted heart. the tedium hills that don’t draw a straight line or do the draw them as wavy as a drunk man traces the evolution of his machinery, evolving toward what would save his back. the growl plant parses the hydration, its moving parts synchronized to chant its oiled liturgy, surrounded by mute meadow, scorned beneath sky. miniature cowboys lead their horses to rehearsal. boot heels grinding the affectionless dirt of this unkissed land, this stone rubbed industry of dirt & dust that only barely tolerates a human life. wind the sky’s machinery, they shall wind the sky until its tight enough growl too, machine the predator’s tool to exert a precisely calculated force over its victim land, in its victim land. daughters are assistants who rehearse the folding in the latino laundry. their little boy unleashes his play upon them for now but he will work soon enough. jeans & hats grip the rails beside the next man preparing to be sacrificed in the theater of horse vengeance. men splayed on the ground forcing boots into the deepest stirrup they can, hoping to delay the inevitably violent evacuation from wild they allowed to remain. from here a far off curtain of rain sweeps casually toward birdsong. a body of water laps the tumbled baby teeth that lines its shore. a small family pushes a stroller down the sidewalk past a painted mural of syllabic togetherness, its pictures thumbnail a story so much smaller than the land their lives are pulled from. a rooster crows behind the scrolling sign, both of them announcing what’s on sale to no one. clouds tower behind the stacked hay hangar, effortlessly mocking the work of men. a river slithers in the canyon it carved for obsessive eons, pinnacles of stoic stone, once submerged, point mercilessly at the indifferent sky god. save your money and barge your wheat to Portland the farmer says. solemn men pacing their dusk dusted land cradle their deadly sleeping babies like rifles as their dog sniffs ahead, eager for trouble. teenagers toss rotating bags of onions like luggage just arriving on a red eye from the fields, tractor tilled and spewing chaff. and the hills have nothing to say still. a dam is a canvas where we paint a still life of the river’s near death. the ancient Japanese-Americans who were shunted into the barbed corner of this, their home, bow before their shrines. spy the river through the trees, eavesdrop on its murmuring secrets as it twists through a parched belly. slanting shadows zigzagging across the postal exterior. in this corner of the state, all towns are small & humble before the land, as if hoping to be forgiven their existence. forklift constructed stacks beside smokeless columns beside their tin sheds of silence which is redundant here. friday night football field carves a rectangle of light from the dark desert night. beserk young men prepare for whatever war might use them. and the utter dark around them, barely kept away, hovers both soon and near. and ghosted hands pat the dough into shape for the man fed oven. snippeting rhythmic bursts of palm patter. this place is a hole, deepened to extract its metal, a deeper grave dug to excruciating the loss. the gum of nothingness excavated for a pulled tooth of metal to sell. abandoned land left awaiting bodies to fill. and each one defined by function, each type of pull. the land where they have coned its aluminum hum. truck dumped load while the forklift lingers at the lip of the hole. and whole hayfields ingested row by orderly row, suctioned and spit into parallel trucks driving alongside until they separate wide, leaving the eaten wheat heart bleeding beneath a jagged tooth hill.
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