One of the 12 winning poems from our poetry contest with the University of Arizona Poetry Center celebrating our centennial year! Stay tuned for more!

Ghosting Nadja
By Steven Alvarez

arrive Hotel Congress

& find sun-puddle chortled shiny

redheaded B. Wright sporting sandals

ask how many freckles

B. Wright sez millions

lifts shirt’s tail & her back—

sprinkled nutmeg ocotillo

B. Wright hands a hand-rolled

number tobacco hairs spilling

observe mechaniz’d javelina pursuing

Dillenger & B. Wright writes My

(desultory) book fails more & that word

you just used you imposing—you impose yrself

B. Wright brown coat fur-lined purple

buttons bedecked in the dark but no collar

& long wool skirt haunting reception

sey she loves the stairway & smells delightfully

rose & the almanac of the dead tattooed

on left forearm paper skin sprinkled

w. nutmeg B. Wright that night-blooming

cereus desert mariposa &—

& no don’t think look—

like Dillenger calling myself missed

Dillenger the Conque—

. . . humid American mind

& lupine supine desert chicory . . .

how much an epic? Fifty, fifty-five? Per square foot of course

. . . yea Tucson . . .

& dig this I wrote this for the ghost this darksome

ghost brittle brush brown her fuzzy

fluff grass hanging blown down

sprung desert mediocrity—& ghosted this text

B. Wright hands me a hand-rolled number

tobacco hairs spilling observe mechaniz’d javelina

pursuing Dillenger B. Wright writes My (desultory)

book fails more & that word you just used you imposing—

you impose yrself B. Wright you—actress breathing

B. Wright writes & B. Wright writes & that word imposing—

B. Wright speaks another sort maintain poet make me

desire to do the . . . of .A.E.TUSED

B. Wright where’d you get those little red shoes?

B. Wright write writing too oh yes write arrive

at Hotel Congress only to find sun-puddle chortled shiny

redheaded B. Wright sporting sandals ask

that ghost how many freckles & B. Wright sez

millions lifts shirt’s tail & sprinkled nutmeg ocotillo—

B. Wright sells Sonoran hotdogs at the ballpark

yea Tucson—B. Wright writes B.

Wright brown coat fur-lined, purple buttons

arrive Hotel Congress