INTERACTIONS, UNENDING FOR NOW
by Aria Pahari
The summer after graduating with my MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona, I spent the first half of July in Patagonia, a small town of about 900 people located an hour south of Tucson. Patagonia served as my home base for the Field Studies Program, which brings MFA students to Southern Arizona on a two-week writing and research residency.
During my Field Studies experience, I was able to explore Southern Arizona beyond Tucson. When I was not in Patagonia working with Borderlands Restoration Network or exploring the Paton Center for Hummingbirds, I traveled to Nogales (Arizona), Nogales (Sonora), Bisbee, and Coronado National Forest in Sierra Vista. Much like these visits which lasted no longer than a day, my writing practice occurred in brief snatches—I scribbled whenever I found moments to sit still and process what I had observed.
As someone who grew up on the East Coast all her life, there was much to take in on every single day of Field Studies. The following poems gesture to the tension I noticed between the natural beauty of Patagonia and the Southern Arizona region, and the political struggle around the U.S.-Mexico border. As I wrote these pieces, I thought about how the two sides of this dichotomy interact, and what it would feel like for them to coexist on the page.
The poems below are accompanied by photos I took during my various visits. The italicized sentences that caption the photos and intersperse the poems are direct quotations from women migrant organizers at Kino Border Initiative. These women generously met with us and shared stories of leaving the violence in their hometowns of Guerrero, Mexico to attempt crossing into the U.S. Their words were skillfully interpreted for us from Spanish to English by Jared, our informative, patient guide.
In combining poems, photos, and direct quotation, this post forms my attempt to weave together my Field Studies experience into a glimpse of what it was like to learn more about the Southern Arizona region—its conflicts, land, people, and ecology—and grapple with how these elements interact.
***
Birdsong pools the valley.
I am drowned, asleep.
Let the currents wrap me.
Let the clouds keep low.
Aglow in dawnlight,
Rain releases its hem.
During a storm the sky
Is fabric tearing itself
apart. Below seams of golden
shadow stretched to bursting,
birds pivot to the lee side
of a tree. I rest my cheek
on the cool side of a pillow.
Each of us variously undone
by shreds in the sky, yet
only I wake dry.
We just wish to have safety and peace of mind.
***
barn swallows flit for flies
their mud huts dot the house:
structure upon structure
i teem with distance
beneath the awning
sprawls a metropolis
of crevices must i relinquish
this yearning to be close
a hummingbird’s spiderweb
home expands with her young
i learn most by watching
her green wings whir
People look at you with suspicion.
***
Birdtail flicks with each call, a burbling of
notice me, but do not define me.
Cottonwoods sprout by creekwater—a jolt
I am tempted to accelerate in my imagination.
I strive for effacement, yet undo my progress
With each keystroke and penciled thought.
Thickets by the water keep shrinking, a glitch
Warping cycles into a single trickling line.
Can I count my appearances in your memories?
Mirages linger as poems: indefinite, marked.
I had no intention of leaving my home.
***
surrender to the heat in Nogales—let desert ants prick you with all you do not know—walk from one law into the next—the lines through the mesquite are not equal—one impinges upon the other—a policed specter—unsensed ridges—multiple attempts at crossing—persistence on one end—oblivion on the other—this is really warped—it's really fucked—your weapons poison those who seek safety—on your side of the dash—inner monologue disturbs your listening—keep your ears on the revolutionary women—each meets your eyes as she describes a scar on her memory—one was caught in a crossfire with her baby—one makes dessert apples and sells them to pay for bus fare—another ran away from her first reporter but now barrels forward with her story—all confess to fear—miedo—in the next breath—fe—faith—possibility sleeps in the mesquite—desert a sea of sound—like a mermaid whispering—in the ear of a girl who believes.
The conversation never ends.
***
once we vanish the first word from National Forest
there will be no abandoned
plastic bottles backpacks partly
hidden in long grasses close
to agave blooming yellow
there will be no one climbing
9000-foot mountains to traverse
into a place that slaps a different
name on bulging lines encasing it
forest will be forest: lungs
whose breaths reprieve us
yes people will still hide
yes people will still leave
but no one will be chased
unless they wish to be found.
We are one voice in the name of all.