Bent over a black pot on an outdoor stove
a woman lifts bread
dripping from the oil with a stick and calls

for more Cokes from the house.
We drift among the booths
where families sit with quilts

and pots, carved turtles and tiny katsinas.
The sky’s white, the heat like cotton batting.
A lone carnival ride revolves,

empty cars bolted to a steel rod.
Whatever we came for, it isn’t this sad, dusty field
or the trays of turquoise rings and bracelets,

the same we’ve seen in every trading post
along the way. Why not admit
there’s no place our love will be easy again,

however far we drive into the mountains;
why not say it here, where the air
is heavy with flies, where nothing is trying

very hard to be graceful
or even kind. But maybe it is kindness, after all
that keeps us from talking; we walk side by side,

tear the soft bread in two and share it.
Up the hill are the private houses of the pueblo.
At the half-built church

you stop to snap a picture
of the finished arch, the piled adobe bricks,
a place our friends will later take for ruins.

-Kim Addonizio