•  “If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert”

    From Postcolonial Love Poem

    I will swing my lasso of headlights
    across your front porch,

    let it drop like a rope of knotted
    light at your feet. 

    While I put the car in park,
    you will tie and tighten the loop 

    of light around your waist—
    and I will be there with the other end 

    wrapped three times
    around my hips horned with loneliness. 

    Reel me in across the glow-
    throbbing sea of greenthread,
    bluestem prickly poppy, 

    the white inflorescence of yucca
    bells, up the dust-lit stairs into your
    arms. 

    If you say to me, This is not your new
    house but I am your new home
    , 

    I will enter the door of your throat,
    hang my last lariat in the hallway, 

    build my altar of best books on your bedside
    table, turn the lamp on and off, on and off, on
    and off. 

    I will lie down in you.
    Eat my meals at the red table of your heart. 

    Each steaming bowl will be, Just
    right
    . I will eat it all up,

    break all your chairs to pieces.
    If I try running off into the deep-purpling scrub brush, 

    you will remind me,
    There is nowhere to go if you are already here, 

    and pat your hand on your lap lighted
    by the topazion lux of the moon through the window, 

    say, Here, Love, sit here—when
    I do, I will say, And here I still
    am
    . 

    Until then, Where are you? What is your address?
    I am hurting. I am riding the night 

    on a full tank of gas and my
    headlights are reaching out for
    something. 

    __________________________________

    “If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert” from Postcolonial Love Poem. Copyright © 2020 by Natalie Diaz. Reproduced with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

    Natalie Diaz
    Natalie Diaz
    Natalie Diaz is the author of Postcolonial Love Poem and When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award. She has received many honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a USA fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Diaz is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University.





    More Story
    How Celebrities Can Leverage Their Influence for Good in 2020 A quick word to campaigning celebrities. You’re probably not one of them, but to Angelina, Brad, LeBron, George, Jennifer,...
  • Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member: Because Books Matter

    For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience, exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag. Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

    x