Coyote Crossing

Ashen in the Desert

There’s a scene in the 1998 film Passion in the Desert that does not appear in the Honore de Balzac short story on which the film was based. The short story focuses on the relationship between a man and a leopard: the film takes an entire act to

Desire Lines

Longing defines the storied heart. Contentment is pleasant enough, but it kills story. “And they lived happily ever after.” Fukuyama arrived at this realization, though his dystopia — unlike those of Orwell or Huxley — was unintended. But he knew

If David Byrne had written “Lost In The Supermarket”

I’m all lost in the supermarket
I have never been happier
so many aisles with so many products
so many grownups get their shopping done here.

Hey mama mama, come here and find me
wrapped up in the cereal aisle
you know Trix are just Kix with more

Published

I have neglected to mention that I have a piece in the third and most recent issue of the desert-oriented literary magazine Phantom Seed. My fellow publishees include Mary Sojourner, Mike Cipra, editor Ruth Nolan, Deborah Kolodji and a host of

Deer Medicine

“That is their medicine,” she said. “They offer themselves up.”

She was speaking of hunting, and so I disregarded her words when they came to me, second-hand. Slob hunters are slob hunters, rednecks in the Adirondacks or wannabe-healers in

Flash fiction, as it were

[Speaking of slurry lines. From around 1996.]

An overhead slurry line from the giant strip mine on Black Mesa crosses the road midway between Kayenta and Tuba City, Arizona. This pipeline takes coal from the heart of the Navajo reservation, mixed

Draft Chapter Two: Incensed

[Reading this at the writer’s group tonight. This won’t be here forever, but thought I’d share it. Devoted readers of my work may find a passage or two to be somewhat familiar. The first chapter draft — or intro, or whatever — is here.]

Removed so

Expanding my stranglehold on desert-related new media empires

The estimable Larry Hogue has taken leave of his communications consultant job at the Desert Protective Council, and the DPC has asked me to take his place. Not that I could replace him. But I’ll do my best.

The gig, a part-time consulting deal,

About me

What is selfhood? I begin to realize, these days, that I cannot actually define myself. I begin to realize, these days, that I have so far done the opposite. I subtract everything from the universe that i know is not me, and declare the remainder

The Open Laboratory 2009: open for nominations

Since 2006, the Open Laboratory series has taken the best writing first published on science-oriented blogs and published it in book form. (I have an essay in each of the volumes for 2006 and 2007. I must have been distracted somehow last year.)  … (continues)

Xolotl

Citrus flower hangs heavy in rain-washed air.
Restless parrots argue over palmfruit,
their brilliant green tails flashes against the lapis sky.
Coyolxauhqui’s round white face
watches over all from above the temple.

Xolotl’s blood drips on the

A reading

I’m putting together a collection of poetry to make available for sale — I will of course let all of you know when it’s finished so that you can rush to buy several copies for each of your friends — and I found one I wrote some time ago, entitled

Old Faultline archives up

For those of you who have wondered why Coyote Crossing’s domain is faultline.org rather than coyotecrossing.org or creekrunningnorthwasmoreusefulonblogspats.net or somesuch, I tried to launch a California-based environmental web magazine here from

Alluvium

This pebble in my boot, when it was one
still with its mother rock, cooled over tens
of centuries: a batholith. Bright grew
the flakes of muscovite, bright grew the pale
discolored quartz, each grain an infinite
fine tetrahedral tesselation, it … (continues)

Paleontology

[Time to haul this one out of the archives, what with all the targazing I’ve done the last couple days.]

Paleontology

“What is it that sets us apart,” she asked,
“from sunset or sierra?
What is the line between ourselves
and the terrain from

Desert Pavement

This wind is a tide. Plant your footsoles on the earth: the wind will scour the sand out from underneath, send you toppling backward into the holes it digs beneath your heels. It is relentless. It is patient. Sandgrain after wind-driven sandgrain

On Writing

Jeneane Sessum notes a trend:

The old OLD pay for writers when I started out 25 years ago was $1 a word. During the dot-com era I was averaging $3 a word. At other times, the average compensation has fallen in the middle. For web content, I’ve

“The fish are missing. They are gone.”

The coho run in Lagunitas Creek has crashed. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The lack of rain this winter has contributed to what fisheries biologists say is, so far, the worst return of coho salmon in the recorded history of Marin County’s

Ripley Desert Woodland

Snow remains this afternoon, thin glazed patches underneath the junipers. Ravens fly in pairs through the Western Mojave sky. A pair approaches, not seeing us behind a stand of juniper and Joshua. First one and then the other double-takes, stumbles

Elysian Park

I miss the certainty I had back then.
I miss the knowing all of it, the keen,
the ardent hewing to my heart’s clear path.
Old men slow-shamble in the liquor aisle,
sigh Russian imprecations baleful, soft
under their smog-choked breath. This