2025
Haiku from Seventeen Syllables
A single sentence captures the ease—and emotional cost—of outwardly agreeing when one’s true answer is no.
Poem archive
Poems
Read poems by Arizona and Southwestern writers, plus classic work preserved in the AZPoetry literary archive.
Search by poem title, poet, or a phrase you remember. Each archive page is designed to lead readers toward more poets and related work.
2025
Land Alive
Chorlton imagines the desert landscape as a thinking presence whose roads, rocks, animals, shadows and canyons pose questions that exceed ordinary human answers.
2025
The Mesa Wind Blows Soft
Alone beneath western stars, the speaker asks the gentle mesa wind to carry kisses and memories to an absent woman. The surrounding landscape becomes a messenger for longing that cannot otherwise reach her.
2025
Get Back
Two characters, Jojo and Loretta, are introduced as people who have moved away from where they supposedly belong, while the recurring refrain repeatedly commands them to “get back.” Jojo’s departure specifically begins in Tucson, Arizona.
2025
Night in Arizona
Moonlight transforms the Arizona desert into a quiet, dreamlike world where the moon resembles a snowflake, cacti become guardians, and night unfolds like a desert lily.
2025
The Song of the Sonoran Desert
Hall presents the Sonoran Desert as a place governed by elemental powers: cactus, yucca, rock, sand, silence, stars, legends, and spirits. The landscape is not merely scenery; it holds memory and mystery.
2024
December Morning In The Desert
On a cold Arizona morning, the speaker imagines the apparently silent stars as an enormous working machine whose unheard energy continues through birds, insects and other creatures while humans sleepily enter an ordinary Monday.
2024
The Giant Cactus of Arizona
Monroe imagines a giant Arizona cactus as an ancient sentinel that has silently witnessed stars, mountains, civilizations and geological time while refusing to reveal what it knows.
2024
In the Arizona Desert
Wortley presents the Arizona desert through contrasts: fierce sunlight and purple shadow, silent mountains and calling mesas, harsh aridity and brilliantly blooming cactus and poppies.