You don't often get to peek behind the curtain. Most of you know that HUMMINGBIRD took me 20 years to complete. We often talk about doing a non-fiction book of some of my experiences in the Twilight Zone of that experience. (And, yeah, I'm starting on HUMMINGBIRD II right now.)

During the long year and a quarter I lived in Tucson, doing the research and the medicine work and wrestling ghosts and devils (I'm not being cute), I had trouble focusing after a while. The night siege was so intense sometimes, and my own travails in love, career, writing, friendship, and personal finances so harrowing, that I was busted down to reading haiku. I couldn't process long texts. Issa, Buson, Basho, Onitsura were my best friends in that lonely desert.

So, for your curiosity and perhaps pleasure, here are some haiku-form notes on the experience of writing THE HUMMINGBIRD'S DAUGHTER.

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SONORAN DESERT SUTRAS:
Notes on Writing The Hummingbird's Daughter in Tucson

(Sonora Review 56, 2009.)

for Brian Andrew Laird

Despairing of God
I went to the desert
to seek my own saint.

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Haunted adobe--
candelabra's melting stubs--
wax that fell was black.

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If I went downstairs,
heard kitchen racket overhead--
nobody else there.

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Disembodied hand
tarantula-crawled across
white sheet to my face.

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Medicine woman
cooking her green tamales
held me when I wept.

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Beer with Chuck Bowden.
Three o'clock coffee with Laird.
Writers at The Cup.

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Sunset desert hikes
meeting javelina gods
white roadrunner guide.

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In the old archive
librarian grabbed my hands
and cried, "Please heal me!"

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Drove Ed Abbey's car
no muffler up to Denver--
ghost in Cadillac.

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Someone set a fire
and tried to burn the place down
slit apart the bed.

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on the torillas
in the refrigerator
one dead rattlesnake

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men target shooting
at fake clay pigeon CDs--
Front 242

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The medicine man
said, "I will give you a dream"--
gave me green rock: dreams.

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Teresita came
Walking from the other side,
Brought me white flowers.

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San Xavier del Bac
lit Teresita candles
hillside holy hours.

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Three a.m. hiking
in the desert with women
who laughed in the dark.

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Watching the comet
at the end of the highway
her hip cocked on mine.

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No, don't speak his name!
I heard the Knocker Angel
pounding on my door.

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So many devils
unleashed by the medicine
I slept with a knife.

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Mt teacher took me
to ask questions of the plants--
I felt like a child

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Halloween midnight
one wrecked car blocking the road--
single human leg.

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One box Minute Rice--
one old cat, half deaf, half blind--
abandoned to trust.

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Yaqui funeral--
old man in his black coffin
colder than the moon.

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First monsoon rainstorm--
I finally saw miracles--
frogs leaped from the ground.

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Female medium
insisted spirits told her--
I'd signed questionnaire.

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Tinajas Altas--
couldn't find any water,
someone left a can.

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After the car wreck,
100 trucks drove over
the children's clothing.

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At old copper mine
pondering day's lessons
coyotes stalked me.

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The angry scholar
called to threaten a lawsuit
if I wrote the book.

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She said we were twins
separated in heaven--
did I want to party?

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The Hotel Congress
was still a holy vortex--
Dillinger slept there.

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Down in Mexico
The curanderas fed me
Bowls of green Jell-O.

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Teresita's niece
wakes up on certain mornings
floating in the air.

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Standing in graveyards
in Clifton, Arizona--
thought I might find her.

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"I'm their worst nightmare!"
he said in his adbobe--
"Liberal with guns!"

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Medicine woman
said she missed grandmother's ghost
since it left with me.

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The saint's granddaughter
heals families in Phoenix--
danced for Dean Martin.

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Holy woman said,
"In heaven you'll have a job!"
Shaking her finger.

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When down to nothing
the spirits bring miracles--
one dollar Whopper.

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Hiking Sheep Pen Trail
vulture flew up behind me--
my shadow grew wings.

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Mostly it was work
alone on old computer--
Nine Incha Nails all night.

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I learned something there
From the Saint of Cabora--
Every day's sacred.

# posted by Luis @ 12:30 PM