usually pleasant odor
on that narrow wooden stage, he talked petrichor
the state smell of New Mexico, alongside
roasting chile, the state color being red, rust
red [in actuality, and by law, the state smell
is “roasting green chile in the fall,” probably
the most useful thing the legislature’s ever done]
some more fast-facts for the itinerant
over-educated rounder: New Mexico
has a lower-than-average incidence
of cancer, alongside Nevada, nukes
be damned. [here there is an acoustic guitar flourish]
New Mexico was first,
though, as far as nuke tests. i hear kids used to swim
in the
creek
right by the test site. those kids got
outsiders like me ruin shit
same reason Montana has some
of the highest housing prices
in the West now; people with
no sense and lots of money
that’s where I’M from, motherfucker [here you might imagine
a diving electric guitar, but i’m fond of a fiddle solo]
where the state smell is whiskey-breath
and smoking tires [actually, we don’t have
a state smell, but we do have a state pancake:
huckleberry] where Ted Turner
built his twelfth or thirteenth ranch
[who knows which. maybe all these rich
folks who believe in population
control should take matters into
their own hands and wipe their own
stain off the already-bloody prairie,
if you catch my drift]
Ted’s got a few in New Mexico too:
land’s cheap and bloody here, i hear it
always has been
you’ll hardly find a place more stolen-from
stolen-back, or dearly-held, a quilt of
feds and rez and angry cowboys of all
colors and creeds,
cross
above
them all
and seemingly saving
nobody
who needs saving
anyhow?
petrichor:
but not today. today is the harsher smell
of well water out of the hot hose
and as it spills into the dust the hose
cools in my hand and the tomatoes
sigh with relief and inhale deeply,
exuding their own heady greenness
[tomatoes sound like soft harmonica,
or ray wylie hubbard singing]
*
August Ryan lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and whistles while depositing half-drunk coffee cups around the home he shares with his partner. The cats watch on with interest. You may find his work in the engine(idling, Oakwood Magazine, and The Wayne Literary Review, among others.
El Portal Literary Journal 