Spotlight turning in the desert
An unnamed mountain range, or at least I don’t know it,
dark shoulder against the blue felt flannel sky
Stray white wool in the sky
Desert wine leave a gritty chalk
against the teeth
Scorched minerals, sandstone and shale
on the tongue

There was a pack of dogs padlocked
in a squat run of chicken wire
and listing plywood
They scrabbled and growled and yelped against each other
a deeper bass than the coyotes
squealing in the dirt of 29 Palms
Stray barks, stray shots from the range
A muffled pop and echoing cracks
And the stars thickening like curdled milk
Like waves frothing over the drowned moon.