This Is How A Desert Moves by Rosalynn Blaisdell

For Brooklyn

1.
We stand in front
of the sink as

brush after
perfect brush

she fixes my hair
	     I watch

strands fall	her
hands smoothing

an endless process of
checking rechecking–

	Does this hurt?

I am so still as to
not remind her

our ritual           (often)
makes her late to work

She catches my eye
in the mirror	  tells me
 
she should have left
ten minutes ago

& keeps brushing




                                                                                                                                                 2.
                                                                                Chemotherapy was originally derived from
                                                                             mustard gas. Everyday I wonder what it does
                                                                                   to your body. Everyday you wonder what
                                                                                                                 your body does to me.




3. Lost Ranch Loop

I can’t remember where it hinges. We are standing in the center of the bear 
trap she’s running up and down the grooves of. All the ranges look the same. 
Smooth white rocks collect on the seam of the desert’s palette like plaque. 
Brush walking, we kick them all aside and they combust like dumping out a 
box of packing peanuts. This is a sophisticated trail system, apparently. 
There’s nothing like this at home, apparently. There are ruins someplace just 
off-screen– you can tell by how voice echoes, bouncing off some decimated 
concrete just to smack you in the left ear. All the saguaros are keeled over to 
one side– that’s how you know the decibels of our voice made them, one by 
one by one by one by– She’s back again, running up the other side of the 
bear trap, shaking her head. She wants to get higher up, look down at the 
desert instead of just across it. We’re standing in the middle of a sinkhole, 
swallowing. It’s gargling a body. Who remembers what they say about the 
canary? Who knows how to make them come when called?




                                                                                    4.

                              this is the sound of a PET scan. it makes images i cannot explain in words only in 
                              other  images:  a cactus  skeleton is to  train  tracks  as  shredded snake skin is to 
                              fishing  net  as  a  naked rusted can is to a bullet as her bladder is to more tumor. 
                              watching  her  lift  her  shirt,  this  is  my  mistake–  i  want  to  know:  who  is  the 
                              obstructor?

5. r/lymphoma

No one deserves cancer so
fairness goes out the window–

              throw cure rates
              out the window–

                         I am on a watch & wait.

It’s kind of a strange news
to deliver to people–

                       You’re too young for cancer.

I’m looking for any advice
           to help her through:

I think the bell symbolizes
                 		a very human thing–

I don’t like being
the center of attention.

				            I just feel like
		         	I’m not me anymore.

Reading what some of you
                        have gone through felt like

heartbreak every time.





                                                                                                                                                 6.			
                                                            i want to say * **** *** but i don’t want to remind you of dying




7.
In 2015, Tig Notaro took off her shirt
at the end of Boyish Girl Interrupted
post double mastectomy. We used to
revel in this shared fantasy of fabric
laying flat across our chests, how nice
it would be to feel cared for.



                                                                                     8.

                                               this is what you find in a care package delivered to you by a 
                                               teenage boy. he will notice your aversion to accept it and he 
                                               will tell you that that is how he was in the beginning, too. his 
                                               friend will tell you how excited he is to organize  a  car  wash. 
                                               you are stuck in place between catharsis and real.

                                                                                                                                                 9.
                                                              I feel like I’m dying faster than everyone else Is this a dirge or an ode





10. Centimeters, Your Palm

Phoenix is one highway relative to
San Diego. Standing on the side
of the road, I wait for my shoes

to melt into the asphalt like crayon.
During hot flashes, my palm melts
into your chest & I feel something

press against it. Before you moved away,
we spent the summer geocaching
the neighborhood. We pulled a dove

with a bleeding heart from the tall grass.
A tight scroll was trapped inside its mouth:
Disembodiment is neither a symptom

nor a diagnosis. There was a button
woven into the small intestine of
the bird. I had nothing to exchange.

Rosalynn Blaisdell (she/they) is a second-year MFA Poetry candidate at San Diego State University, where she also teaches Rhetoric and Writing Studies. Their work has been published by Fifth Wheel Press, and is forthcoming in Cherry Tree Review and Bicoastal Review.

4 May 2026