Inspiring social change through print, spoken word, and live performance.

"We do not want your civilization.
We would live as our fathers did,
and their fathers before them."

- Crazy Horse

DRIVING TO THE CORTEZ GOLD MINE

by Melissa Holmes

I.
to see other destructions -
    mountains of sediment in the desert
    Joshua trees shooting withered roots along cyanide-bleached
                                                                                                     surfaces
                              in search of topsoil that eroded generations ago.

a need to bear
     witness to something other than my own
invisible certainties.

I know what to expect from isotopes -
the irradiation of apples,
the push to keep surface crisp -
it's a matter of economics. They say

radiation is what cured
my brother's cancer. The strange
nature of fission - catalyst,
cure, food preservative.
Distinctions mutate.


2.
It takes us half the day to change
deserts. The beige of Eastern Washington
becomes the brown of Oregon,
                                                       Nevada's gold.

We exhaust conversation near Winnemucca,
make do instead with country music
                               turned too low to distinguish between songs.

Outside the truck
the gutted center sunbathes.

Sagebrush everywhere,
not even the sky can stunt the magnitude.

Landscape swallow our truck,
digests us
                   breaks us down into its cells
until we lose ourselves
                                           in the hum of dust and sun.


3.
Sand knows the secret of self-preservation
              how to avoid the accumulation of atoms.

A naked persistence
overlooked long enough to anchor
slowly
               in pockets of mineral and shade.

I will lie in wait for prophets,
distract them from the isotopic visions,
let the lizards exfoliate the surface of my skin.

Despite the excavation,
the weight of water in my veins,
                                                        I will spread
into the expanse of basalt until edges
                                                                          no longer exist

Return to wordsasweapons.com shoshone page