A Corner Lot in Albuquerque
A poem for anyone who wants to know what it was like to live in Albuquerque, and hasn't yet seen Breaking Bad.
It is 8:19pm. I am sitting at my desk
beneath the west-facing window.
There is not enough sunlight in this house,
so I take advantage of afternoons now that,
after six years in a cave, I cut my standing desk —
made of 12x8s in Bodo’s workshop
four years before a blood clot cut him down —
into a place to people-watch
as passersby toss their trash into my rocks:
Little vodka shots (the plastic ones
at the Total Wine checkout aisles),
Sonic 44oz Strawberry Limeade cups
(the styrofoam ones), and
the empty packaging for a giant dildo,
about the same size (the contents of which
our neighbor’s daughter — five years old —
discovered in the corner lot
while walking to school the following day:
“Mommy, what’s that pink stick in the dirt?”)
I picked up needles, cotton balls and
one of those blue rubber strips
(the ones As Seen On TV! markets
as a jar-lid opener)
from the grass at the park across the street —
where my wife walks the dog too late at night —
zipped them back up inside
the polka-dotted toiletry bag emptied out
next to four months’ worth of unopened bills
for a woman whose name I can’t remember,
and threw them in the trash can.
A week later, the police sectioned off
a pickup truck containing the breathless presence
of a death by shotgun (this, opposite the corner where,
a few month’s before, an angry boyfriend
pushed our other neighbor’s mother
out the door of his moving car, and
drove back and forth over her body,
as if she was the problem.)
They built up their property walls after that,
guarded from the votive candles
blown out across the street.
To my left, our other other neighbor
is on his back again, oil-stained.
He fixes up old cars in the times between
his clients’ temper tantrums
(every window in his house is rock-broken),
or stripping off their dresses
next to the pink stick on the corner
by the elementary school.
The last time a woman — uh — entertained
a dog-walker, I ran outside to see
if the man was alright. “Yeah,” replied.
“I’m fine. I mean, you know this guy
sells crystal meth, don’t you?
What’s the matter with you?
Don’t you know your neighbors?”
Not intimately enough, I guess.
But one day, while shoveling rocks
into something called a yard
for people to throw their trash into,
she stopped by with all her clothes on and
asked if my family had been to church that morning.
“Good,” she said, when we nodded.
“No,” she said, when we asked her the same,
and walked away.
And our other other other neighbor came running
when he saw thieves loading my garage
into their pickup last spring.
I lost my bike — the gift my wife gave me
before we were married.
The one with the teal fork
that she didn’t have the money for.
Two days later, someone gift-wrapped
an electric scooter with my neighbor’s tree.
They gave it to me out of kindness (maybe pity),
but also because their dog, Bruce,
hates the sound of my voice,
and absolutely nothing will quiet his barking
so long as I so much as breathe in my own backyard.
I am sitting at my desk.
The one Bodo helped me make.
Cut short, a little, like him.
It’s not exactly a story,
but there’s quite a bit to see,
staring out the window of a corner lot,
in Albuquerque.
Before you go… this weekend, I’d like to invite you to join me in my writing practice. I started opening up a space for people who like to work on things in the presence of / alongside other people who are working on things. I find it helpful to “body-double” (read: have another person around when you need to do something you're having difficulty getting started or focusing on), so it’s great for me, and I’m going to be there, doing it, regardless.
Anyhow, here’s the info if you’d like to join me Saturday morning (it’s free).
Add to Calendar 🔗: https://shorturl.at/Sh1RM
Zoom 🔗: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/88424675236?pwd=4XpqUxywN141KW1AQhBc8w6lKbZtwI.1
If you’re interested in how you might support my work, you can become a paid subscriber, or purchase something from my store, or book me for an event, or buy my book.
If you’re interested in how I might support your work, you can book a Coffee Datewith me (think “creative accompaniment”), or take my course—Clothes For Ghosts: Using Language To Give Bodies To The Haunted Parts Of You—which explores the use of writing in the service of inner work and creative excavation as a means of embodying yourself to the world. (No, you don’t have to be a writer / creative / fill-in-the-blank to participate in either offering.)
this is so so true to my own experience of living in new mexico, down to the Sonic 44oz Strawberry Limeade cups. wild.