by David Chorlton
Arizona hasn’t been a state for long enough
to have traditions the way
older places do; Nuremberg for instance
where Lebkuchen has been made since
the late fourteenth century. Six hundred years
of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves
with citrus peel and flour and more spicy
ingredients baked at three hundred and twenty-five
degrees until they taste German. When Germans
come to Arizona they want to see the canyon
that is older than any confectionary
and ride along Route 66 just to say
they were there. Or if they travel south
it will be for Tombstone, where they’ll find
a celebration of being quick on the draw
and shooting straight, not knowing
anymore who is armed and who is not when they
stop to buy refreshments for the road
at a supermarket or, now it’s legal to carry
hidden weapons, who has a six gun
on his lap at the restaurant with a cold display
of pies that makes them gasp
although Europeans are more disturbed
by not being able to drink
a beer at the sidewalk table of a café
when there isn’t a fence
to contain the space. You’d think the scenery
was custom built from the way
it’s used attracting visitors with waves of yellow
brittlebush from March until the June heat
dries them out, and rocks so red they look
as if they’d fallen directly from the sun. We also
have the blue uniforms of police
empowered to stop and ask are you now
or have you ever been a Mexican? They never
ask how much you like Sedona.
David Chorlton has lived in Arizona for more than thirty years and loves the landscape, but laments that the state legislature has more thorns than the cactus.
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