Something incredible happened today, and the only person I want to tell is my mother, who died twenty-one years ago.

The poems are too good today. I can’t take any more. I’m going to listen to devastating music now and stare into a sky heavy with wildfire smoke where things are taken and given, but they’re never the right things, only sometimes they are, which is the scrap we cling to, isn’t it, because we’re here and have nothing else. I’m sorry to break it to you. Your talon is just a hand. The scrap is what’s left of your baby blanket. It will never reweave itself. You will never fly. You are impossible. And yet.

Poems are in it. They aren’t above it, below it, beside it, behind it. They are in it.

I put water out for the wild critters who congregate in my yard.

In the drought-stricken West, fire is the four-letter word we wear like dead skin on our lips.

I looked up and saw twelve Gambel’s quail, two white-tailed antelope ground squirrels, a rock squirrel, a juvenile western fence lizard, and a butterfly on my back patio. They were either hiding from a predator or digging the shade from the pergola. Or maybe the animal uprising has begun.

Pantoums are like that weird sex thing you try once because you’re curious, but after that one time, you’re like, Naw, I’m good. I’m gonna stick with regular stuff.

I will swallow Earth whole before I write another pantoum.

I carry my father’s war in my body.

A poem can’t just be a counterpoint sung above a nonexistent plainsong. I mean, it can be, but why.

Poets, may I rise from the beautiful destruction of your work. May I live another life, another day, through your poems. Grant me the strength to be burned clean and fly like that fierce mythical bird or even to outlive ten phoenixes like one of the Nymphs—all because of your writing. May we rise through and because of each other. May that be our eternity.

I just clocked fifty-nine active zone minutes on Fitbit getting IKEA items out of their packaging.

He was also like rain.

We need to dispel once and for all the myth that the federal land footprint cannot be changed. — Utah Senator Mike Lee

We need to dispel once and for all the myth that federal lands are like disposable body parts that can be amputated, bagged, and sold to the highest bidder on the black market that the federal economy has become. — Dana Henry Martin

I stole all my husband’s guitar picks because they’re colorful and sparkly. I’m officially (not) a crow (or any type of corvid because apparently their reputation for liking new and shiny things is based on myths, not science).

You have a mouth the shape of joy. I have a mouth the shape of despair. It’s the same mouth.

The world is our corpse flower.

I’ve never come out, but I continually come in: in to who I am and am becoming, in to my truth, in to my experience, in to my personal and family history, in to my communities, in to my survival, in to my resilience, in to my heart, in to my mind, in to my body, in to my creativity, in to my rhythms, and in to my language. Yes, in to my language.

Sell our lands, sell our soul.

Don’t thank me for helping you grow if you grew at my expense.

I don’t know what’s out there, but there are currently nine Gambel’s quail, a juvenile Western fence lizard, and a desert kangaroo rat hiding in my rock wall. Hawk is my guess. Could be cat, but I think it’s hawk. I’m glad my yard is a safe space for them.

I have all the flowering native plants, which means that, as of this morning, I have all the screaming fledglings. My blossoms bring the floofy babies to the yard.

One thing I know: The desert doesn’t need lawnmowers, but here they are in the desert.

Kitty still here.

In the United States, a diagnosis is a label that, when applied, results in exorbitant medical charges.

A fly lives with us now. His name is Jeff. Jeff just bit me on the calf. That’s his way of saying good morning.

Everything is fucking diagnosable.

The longer we live, the longer we live in the past.

I dreamed I invented sardines sold in jars. Their brand name was Jardine.* Dolly Parton did the jingle to the tune “Jolene.” She substituted the product name “Jardine” for “Joline.” It was brilliant.

* I decided the brand name should be Jardine, so I’m changing it to that right now, even though I dreamed it as Jarline.

A baby-sized cyst wins the prize for the strangest health news I read today. From MedPage Today: A fitness trainer from Tennessee who avoided doctors for 7 years despite unusual symptoms ended up with a baby-sized cyst extending from the left upper quadrant to the floor of the pelvis.

My husband thinks Robert Plant is the most interesting member of Led Zeppelin. I think it’s Jimmy Page. I am right. Jon is wrong.

I take my water without ICE.

Jun 7, 2025 I just misread “The 10 Best Sandals” as “The 10 Best Anals,” so that’s how my morning is going.

Jun 7, 2025 This country.

I’m a lot of things, but quiet queer isn’t one of them.

My dog saw a white-tailed antelope squirrel when she went outside to potty. She darted at the squirrel, who in turn jumped in the air, did a big flip, and scurried into a hole in our rock wall. Now, another white-tailed antelope squirrel who witnessed the whole thing is screaming incessantly from a nearby basalt boulder.

My job right now is to hold my silence while it screams.

Stripped of my emptiness, yet I remain empty.

This desert rain, desperate. This desert heart, wanting.

Love, like grief, can blossom.

Kris Kristofferson is my spirit animal.

Here in the land of erosion, time is down, not back.

“The ‘Man-Eater’ Screwworm Is Coming” is one of the best titles for a scientific feature I’ve read in a while. I feel like the man-eater screwworm is coming for all of us.

Managing my to-do list consists of moving everything to the next day.

The bird makes my mind bird.

I wish someone would steal Wax Dana and take her somewhere nice.

It’s alarming what the very few can do to the very many.

Mushrooms freak me out.

This wind is as my mind is.