ISBN: 9780826341600

Centered in northern New Mexico, this collection of poetry describes a series of journeys that create maps of place and memory. The poems travel south to deserts both mythical and real, e… More...

Centered in northern New Mexico, this collection of poetry describes a series of journeys that create maps of place and memory. The poems travel south to deserts both mythical and real, east to childhood and the past, west to the Pacific and notions of Buddhism, and north to Alaska and a cold transcendence. Each section concludes with a return home where reflection charts locations and people lost to everything from the passage of time to urban renewal.From "Map of the Lost: "Take a Left at My MailboxCross Sierra Vista and enter the cul-de-sacWhere the pavement endsCross over and down into the acequia full of trashWhere a sodden quilt lies in the middle of whereStream once moved sandIn eddies. The homeless campDisintegrates, only one mattress leftAnd I'm lecturing my daughterWho steps back to photograph it"Don't come here alone,"And she retorts: "I have since I was eight," and then"It's so peaceful here, butThis is no arroyo, cut by rainBut a remnant of man, an irrigation ditchNow watering detritus, the leftover, cast off, plastic bags, and worse.From here you can cutUp behind the Indian SchoolPast the transformer I didn't even know was thereAnd come out where there once were tracksNow just the runners half buried in soil.It's Baca Street We're backIn the neighborhood where my daughterImmediately becomes lost"I don't get straight streets," she says.My money's good here, I buy two cups of foamy chaiAnd look in her face, turning from girl to womanAnd want to constructMy map of the lost. Media > Book, [PU: University of New Mexico Press]<