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Jim Sagel - Unexpected Turn

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Pass with Care, the sign cautions, but you need no reminding as you pass a butte brooding over stegosaurus hills. You know that the next turn promises the unexpected--a Ponderosa laid open by lightning, a herd of cattle sleek as a Brahman vision, a lake tremulous with trout. This is a land where the sky intoxicates the eye, and history gossips in the willows lining the great river. Its the lost roads that lead to desert gardens; you miss your turn and end up finding your way. In Unexpected Turn self-described migrant writer Jim Sagel takes us on a journey at once austere and astonishing, remote and familiar. This is a love letter to New Mexico in spare and understated prose poems. Sagel visits places bathed in light and steeped in cultural history, where blind curves and unexpected turns lead to self-discovery. In a land older than the country, he captures the rare intersections of light, history, and the heart.

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title Unexpected Turn author Sagel Jim publisher - photo 1

title:Unexpected Turn
author:Sagel, Jim.
publisher:University of New Mexico
isbn10 | asin:0826318118
print isbn13:9780826318114
ebook isbn13:9780585187921
language:English
subjectAmerican prose.
publication date:1997
lcc:PS3569.A32U54 1997eb
ddc:818/.5408
subject:American prose.
Page iii
Unexpected Turn
Jim Sagel
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS
ALBUQUERQUE
Page iv
1997 by the
University of New Mexico Press
All rights reserved. First edition
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sagel, Jim
Unexpected turn/Jim Sagel.first edition
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8263-1823-1 (pbk.)
1. Title
PS3569.A32U54 1997 97-4632
818'.5408dc21
CIP
Some of these writings originally appeared in differing forms in the following publications:
Blue Mesa Review
No. Four, Spring 1992
El Palacio
Summer 1993
Foreplay and French Fries
Mango Publications, 1981
GuestLife New Mexico 1994-95
Rio Grande Review
Fall 1992
Sell-Outs
Winter 1992
Tamaqua
Fall 1992, Winter 1992
and Spring 1993
The Guadalupe Review
No. One 1991
Page v
Contents
Blind Curve
3
Where the Road Deadends
35
Right of Way
43
Switchback
75

Page 1
Pass with Care, the sign cautions, but you need no
reminding as you pass a butte brooding over stego
saurus hills. You know that the next turn promises
the unexpecteda Ponderosa laid open by light
ning, a herd of cattle sleek as a Brahman vision,
a lake tremulous with trout. This is a land where
the sky intoxicates the eye, and history gossips in
the willows lining the great river. It's the lost roads
that lead to desert gardens; you miss your turn and
end up finding your way.
You turn your eyes to the ridge above the pueblo
and gaze at the deer dancers descending in the icy
dawn. You turn on the dance floor in your lover's
arms, as the msicos play the valses their grand
fathers learned from their grandfathers. You turn
a hoe over in the mud to make the adobes for the
home you are already plastering in your dreams.
You turn your head just long enough for the abuelo,
the grotesque and guffawing trickster, to steal your
hat, leaving you to squint at the Matachines dancing
their masked ritual. You turn over in your hands the
santo that has emerged from the root of a cotton-
Page 2
wood tree; you trace the water serpent coiled around
a pot burnished black as an unbroken memory.
Once you have known this land, you will always
turn back. Like the exiled poet who could sense
his lover combing her hair from a thousand miles
away, you will always hear the drum pounding in
your pulse, the Llorona weeping in your inner ear,
the cranes flapping their wings alongside the river in
your blood. Once you have taken the unexpected
turn, you will never again pass without caring.
Page 3
Blind Curve
Page 4
When the Zacate Grew Wild in the Llanos
Leaving the fiesta, I walk through a field of freshly
cut alfalfa. Yo vendo unos ojos negros, the singer's
voice reverberates in a distant box: "Black eyes for
sale," but I'm not buying. All I want to do is smell
the brittle fragrance of the cut hay, the end of the
summer smell of the last cut that takes me twenty
Augusts back to a time when the timothy hay
undulated like a yellow tidal wave in the wind and
we stacked a thousand bales under the sweltering
sun, you and Ipowerful viejo and college refugee.
That evening, as you sharpened your pocketknife
in the glow of a kerosene lamp and told tales in the
tongue of your abuelos of the days when the zacate
grew wild in the llanos, I collapsed into a primitive
sleep on a dusty colchn. When I awoke the follow
ing morning, you were already boiling fresh coffee
in the water you had carried up from the stream.
As you fried eggs and potatoes over the wood fire,
I felt an appetite grow so big inside me, I needed
two languages to express it. Al fin sabia lo que era el
hambre.
At last I had found what I was hungering for.
Page 5
Estrella Fugaz
I am thinking of the space between the stars when
a tail of fire abruptly blazes in the San Ildefonso sky.
Just so unpredictably did I tumble from orbit, my
identity engulfed in flames. Yet, my only wish is to
fall out of myself again and again.
Page 6
At Right Angles in English
The new H.U.D. houses in Santa Clara Pueblo are
laid out in a line straight as a parochial school ruler.
But, then, there are no better Catholics in the New
World than the Tewa Indians. Probably no better
Baptists either. Still, it is not the Pope but Po'pay
whose spirit beats in the kiva. Though succeeding
generations of Tewas may live at right angles in
English, their children's children will continue
to dance the Corn Dance in front of the church.
And even if the world comes to an end, the Pueblo
Governor will refuse to grant an easement for
the Second Coming of Christ.
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