Barrens

The local Alhambra is gone,
A pseudo-Moroccan rose fort
Planted as tourist attraction
Among some imported date palms
In the American desert.

For years it had been a shell,
Pink stucco flaking off concrete,
Looming over the dying palms,
Not an attraction anymore,
An eyesore and better for it.

The grandeur of abandoned kitsch,
All-American monument,
Was how you preferred to see it,
Cheap abbey of an afternoon,
Ravens perched in evening sun

Side-eyeing traffic for roadkill.
But that’s not all-American,
Really now, is it? No, this is—
The developers have bought it
And swiftly torn it down to build

Brand-new matchstick subdivisions,
Winching water from underground
And near-to-deadpool reservoirs.
They will grow beautiful in turn,
Once they’re roofless and abandoned,

But you will be long gone by then,
One generation of packrat
In ten thousand years of middens.
For now, your short-lived world is new
Again, full of greed and gumption,

With fresh families moving in,
Bland stucco on the face of it,
Each house an unblotched ostrich egg,
All the barrenness on its face,
All the gorgeous ruin hidden.