maybe, she thinks, she owes it to a sadder self to savor this

Last night, hot July 4th in Tucson's barrio,
I watched fireworks shot from a mountain
with locals who bet how soon the mountain
would catch fire. The mariachi didn't drown
the churn of helicopters waiting to douse
the whole thing: the true finale. In the bleachers,
the cops looked on importantly, shook handfuls
of popcorn like dice into their mouths.
I sat behind a man, maybe one of the 3,000
copper miners laid off today, his baby girl
twisting to me over his shoulder.
He couldn't interest her in the sky flowers
no matter how he called Mira! Mira! Mira!

Today, because the crowd's been warmed up,
the monsoons break and the real fireworks begin.
Everyone's been waiting: in the hills, the O'odham
have danced the Round Rainbow. Here, the people
sprint into rain which pelts their upturned palms,
blows the creosote into italics, taunts the dogs
into hurling against their cages. I read a cactus guide
this week and picture the saguaro's shallow roots,
each hair-like thread puffing with purpose,
absorbing a whole year's water, while above ground
sharp pleats expand like an accordion,
or like the fan of the transvestite I surprised
in the bathroom restuffing his dress, confiding
Honey, all men are breast men.

Three weeks here. I've learned the cacti--
not only the saguaro looking like a man
imitating a cactus imitating a man pointing away,
but also the spiky blue agave which yields its heart
to tequila; the barrel cactus that portrays life's ratio:
one blossom, four thousand barbs; and the teddy bear cholla,
about which the guidebook bizarrely advises
the solitary hiker: If a cactus joint attaches itself,
use two pocket combs as levers to flip it away.

How essential is the desert after rain
which stripped the fat stems of palm trees
now curling on the road like rusted tail pipes.
The ornamental orange trees spilled their cargo--
oranges lay in the sand like in Renoir's circus ring
where the audience tossed them for the sequined girls
who must have flown fabulously on the trapeze.
The glad girls clutch as many as they can
to their flat chests, and still the oranges stud the ground
like copper ingots. Now, of course--so hard
to picture a time when girls clamored for fruit--
people who see the painting think the oranges
juggling balls. Barely a century old, yet we misread it.
You'd think its viewers would know
most love the world's reward but not the work.

What would those girls think of a woman, newly
wed, who kissed her pretty husband farewell
to come to the desert for a month of work?
A clumsy woman among rain-washed needles
that seem harmless as Q-tips but henna
her shins and arms with petroglyphs as she walks
with her cactus books. In front of the saguaro
she thinks accordion, fan, lampshade, thinks
of napkins she folded those years as a waitress
(napkins pleated into swans, napkins pleated into sailboats),
thinks of the baby Jesus in the San Zavier mission
and how each morning the dark women vie
to change his sequined dress and pleat it carefully
before combing the golden human hair.

What would the circus girls think
if they knew the woman returns to this adobe
to write down these moves as if for a game
called Connect the Whole World
and her husband phones: Are you working?
I can call back if you're working.
He is the kind of man who says things like
You're not clumsy, you're in touch with your surroundings.
He knows that no matter where they go next
she has lodged in her heart this adobe in the desert
because of work she did within its thick pink walls.
See, the work makes her sentimental, perhaps foolishly so.
She tells him about being passed the tequila,
pouring it down the straw of her throat
after the cops had swaggered away
leaving popcorn in the stands like tiny skulls.
The fireworks were nothing then but smoke
swirling into the night like cream into coffee
and five flames stuttering on the mountain.
She says, How smooth the tequila tasted, after work.

To have a man like that, and work as well.
How can she account for it? Mostly she fears
she's raiding happiness from the larder
of her next life, or, just as bad, from someone else's.
But sometimes she thinks it's better to quaff this
(a hexed word) luck, and not chase it immediately
with her usual, that old gulp of guilt. Maybe, she thinks,
she owes it to a sadder self to savor this.
To work, to take the tools of her serious play--
her man, the adobe, the tequila and guidebook,
the spines that want a piece of her which she gives
(call her clumsy, call her affectionate),
the cops, transvestite, the Mira! Mira! Mira!--
to gather all these oranges to her chest.

[Beth Ann Fennelly {1971- } 'Good Work if You Can Get It', from Open House]