Aditi Machado



from “now,”

THE RED ROAD heads into a red mountain


you listen to its snow melt at the horizon


red asphalt picks up the pink of olden reeds


you listen to dried-up pipelines


red dust stepping up to audition


in full-screen mode, the snow-tipped yarrow


censors your aesthetic, you cathect


a windmill in dry superabundance


cozying up to the cactus syndicate


you audit sonic fashions


you & your echinopsis bloom sillily


at this kinked-up altar of vocables


in this way lacerated


in this way salvific


the sounds of the desert tether you


to rusty pipelines shot thru


w/ hazard, heckling your sad little


human performance


*


A RELATION DEVELOPS between the wind &


you that’s lichenous, you who art green


to love, abstruse movements


brushing your burrs & birds, sine


qua non



sometimes it is a burden


to be so regardful, so cultishly


advertent of kingdoms that prosper


while you, o specious you, you putter


in your vehicular language


you suppress your vatic impulse



namely, you stand with your legs apart


namely, the small tongue gets angry


namely, you odden into being


& an ill wind grates on


your chinny chin chin






Aditi Machado is the author of two books of poetry from Nightboat, Emporium (2020) and Some Beheadings (2017), and seven chapbooks, most recently now (Sputnik & Fizzle, 2022) and The End (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020).