Book party! I rarely do book events, and I’d love to see you at the book party for my brand-new novel, Weird Sad and Silent, at Next Chapter Booksellers in St. Paul this Tuesday, May 27, at 6 pm. I’ll read a little, tell you some secrets behind the writing of the book, answer questions, and there might even be some tiny gifts for you. It’s a school night so fear not, we’ll get you home nice and early, too. Click here for all the details. 

The zinnia seedlings biding their time in the 40-degree drop in temperature from last week. The man and his dog who always stop for a poem from my poetry hut, careful to relatch the door afterwards. The hurt squirrel writhing on the lawn that I called 311 about. The man with the long box braids unloading the giant moving van who stopped to wipe the sweat from his face. So much feels fragile and precious in these days of siege from lies, cruelty, and greed. Don’t we all need refuge?

If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert, by Natalie Diaz

I will swing my lasso of headlights
across your front porch,

let it drop like a rope of knotted light
at your feet.

While I put the car in park,
you will tie and tighten the loop

of light around your waist —
and I will be there with the other end

wrapped three times
around my hips horned with loneliness.

Reel me in across the glow-throbbing sea
of greenthread, bluestem prickly poppy,

the white inflorescence of yucca bells,
up the dust-lit stairs into your arms.

If you say to me, This is not your new house
but I am your new home,

I will enter the door of your throat,
hang my last lariat in the hallway,

build my altar of best books on your bedside table,
turn the lamp on and off, on and off, on and off.

I will lie down in you.
Eat my meals at the red table of your heart.

Each steaming bowl will be, Just right.
I will eat it all up,

break all your chairs to pieces.
If I try running off into the deep-purpling scrub brush,

you will remind me,
There is nowhere to go if you are already here,

and pat your hand on your lap lighted
by the topazion lux of the moon through the window,

say, Here, Love, sit here — when I do,
I will say, And here I still am.

Until then, Where are you? What is your address?
I am hurting. I am riding the night

on a full tank of gas and my headlights
are reaching out for something.​ 

​Click here for more information about Natalie Diaz, and click here to hear Diaz reading today’s poem. If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert first appeared in Postcolonial Love Poem, published in 2020 by Graywolf Press. 

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My podcast: Words by Winter