Through the open window something says come on be serious
and this is how you know it’s Spring. The male Gila woodpecker
arrives with his smoking jacket and red cap and his lady friend
and eats bugs from the aloe flowers in a ratatat that may
as well have been directed by Scorsese. He looks like he could
walk into a department store and walk out with anything
he wanted under his coat he looks like he could put it all
on red and win big he looks like he could be Mrs. Robinson
asking for a ride home, silk stockings a wreck. Out the window
his mate holds back while he takes the juiciest spider mites
and mealy bugs. Some would say she is no pomp, nothing
to write home about without that flash of red atop her crown
perched quietly on the aloe as if she’d been there her entire life
not even like she lost her hat in a fight or a bet or a bad wind
like everything wild has already been done and doesn’t need doing
again, like she knows something we don’t, and she does
July Westhale was born in the American Southwest. Their books include moon moon, Trailer Trash, Unmade Hearts, and Via Negativa, which Publishers Weekly called “stunning” in a starred review. Ocean Vuong chose Westhale as the 2018 University of Arizona Poetry Center Fellow. Along with Mathew Weitman and Felipe Acevedo Riquelme, they are a co-editor and translator for the Unsung Masters series collection Rolando Cárdenas: The Life and Work of a Chilean Master. Their poetry and translations have appeared in Poetry International, McSweeney’s, The National Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others. July is represented by Carolyn Forde at Transatlantic and lives in Tucson, where they are adapting their novel to film. www.julywesthale.co
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