Miss Molly Rockin' in the House of Blue Light You've been a certain angel, you've been doing a deed, you've been in mourning..." -- Michael Lutin on the 12th House Now you trade your wings for incarnation, commit a quick sin and leap into technicolor, you're visible as sweat, your feet leave prints. Is the desert dead as they say? The hummingbird sharpens her beak then disappears, unsolved caper, arrow of possibility. There is no best time to move, I think, only that momeent when you can, when the plate tilts and the peas fall off, when the window opens and the wind sucks you through. Here is the paradox of free will, the wind pulling you with your feet firm on either side. I'm gone in a day, sleeping bag, arrow pointing Go, that sly permissive. I set off in a white Mazda, low to the ground, flashy with its sleek lines screaming "Ticket me!" Eighty miles per hour, ninety. In St. Louis, I switch to something indigo with the lines of a shadow and slip South and West. Yukka, rabbits, bubonic plague. I need the same heat on me as in me, dry and crisp, to be the only water for miles around. Bugs hover like disciples, bright revelation on exposed flesh. The humans are pruney and caught in a grin. Everything looms at night as if listenting to see if I'll break, if my prayer will lift me to the tops of the rocks then throw me to the canyon floor crying Whoa. Ghosts walk the canyon talking about nothing much. The one who drew me in a game of straws approaches my tent, leans on my bladder and attaches electrodes to my heart. Still, I pee on red earth, hear death stroll away, silent as ants on an inchworm. When the rain comes I dream of sex, the kind you wake up to, glowing. -- Maureen Seaton