Kaecey McCormick

Desert Refuge

I was there alone—
watching dusk spread for miles,
purple and orange clouds stacked behind rock piles
cast to one side but somehow upright in this land
where saguaros stretch like barbed wire
beneath the bat-filled sky.

Once I walked down a sloping trail
into a canyon. With one hand I reached for the dark
wings of birds clinging to the rocky walls, wishing I, too, could glide
across the jagged maw. I slid down that path, half blinded
by the midday sun, dreaming of the pink and red juice hidden
in the cacti with the fingers of the other hand stuck between my lips,
teeth cutting trails in my nails, wet tongue searching out the broken,
bloody skin of my cuticles. But no matter how many times
I snagged their ripe skin from those prickly fingers,
the fruit was always rotten.
Bone dry. 

Now I’m here again, alone,
carving trails with a needle in the underside of my arm—
a map, a constellation of the desert,
a way back beneath the barbed wire
to the place I was before.

Kaecey McCormick is a writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry and prose have found homes in different places, including Pine Hills Review, Jabberwock Review, One Sentence Poems, On the Seawall, Third Wednesday and Clockhouse as well as her chapbooks Sleeping with Demons (2023) and Pixelated Tears (2018). She served as poet laureate for the city of Cupertino, teaches poetry at The Writers Studio, and is a current Steinbeck Fellow at SJSU. When not writing, you can find Kaecey hiking up a mountain, painting, or reading a book. Connect at kaeceymccormick.com