Joe Lugara, v2938 (Fenestration Series), 2026
Photography/digital painting
Courtesy of the artist
Artist Website, Instagram
once more cadmium-throated blossoms explode
over the mesas : Grandfather you’ll remember how
our desert geysers yellow : nearly tactile in August
that shimmer on the river’s face : amidst chamisa’s
silver-green blades its inflorescence is opulence :
is caution tape : I widen my frame to its excess as
picture-winged flies crowd the walls of wooly stems :
galls oozing white : did you smell it then : the sessile
scent of latex as tiny detritivores took flight into what
science could see coming? : now heat subtracts glints
from the river’s mirror and some remainders won’t
stay in place : here are radionuclide piles : chamisa’s
trick : like a plain girl raised on little : tapping deep
she accidentally hits toxic vaults : begins to daylight
weapons-tests with the tips of herself : so it is : in
chamisa as in the archives your Bayo Canyon burials
breach Grandfather : root to stem to leaf : strontium-90
mistaken for calcium rises in xylem : surfaces in surfaces
that desiccate : disperses in gusts : rides the blood :
becomes us in this radioactive chain of translocation
from zones of sacrifice : out of sight : so I dig : list
the mutations swirling in taxa : track digital migrations
into the loose unstable abodes of all the family trees
we changed : I blink back the numbers hatching behind
my eyes : the yellow plumes spiked with iotas that (no
secret) obey local winds : settle in children’s bones :
can’t put a finger on it : but I can