The Nine Eyes of the Desert: A Sonoran Desert Web Issue

We’re thrilled to share our fall 2023 web issue, THE NINE EYES OF THE DESERT. With this issue, we wanted to honor the land, history, languages, and stories of those who live in and/or have deep connections to the Arizona communities within and surrounding the Greater Phoenix Area, where Hayden’s Ferry Review is physically located. Our constellating grew into a more expansive goal: instead of following political borders, we decided to follow the natural geography of this land and make space for writers and artists with a connection to the Sonoran Desert. We were inspired by the work of Ofelia Zepeda, Raquel Gutiérrez, Merari Lugo Ocaña, Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, and Sherwin Bitsui (whose poem “Dissolve” inspired the name of this issue), to name a few.

The Sonoran Desert expands through the central-south area of Arizona, on the unceded lands of various Native American communities and federally recognized Native American reservations and nations, including the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Navajo/Diné Nation, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, the Gila River Indian Community, the Akimel O’odham Indian Community, and the Pee Posh Indian Community. It includes most of Baja California and part of Sonora in Mexico, as well as the southeastern corner of California. In the popular (i.e. colonial) imagination, the desert is a place of scarcity, of expansive nothings up for the taking. But we know better. Deserts are incredibly vibrant, complex, abundant, beautiful ecosystems and providers of life. In this special issue, we want to highlight the plentiful art that this region inspires, nurtures, and protects.

The Sonoran Desert is home to part of Mexico and the United States, two countries with some of the most violent, abhorrent historical records (stretching to the present moment) against Indigenous communities, as well as immigrants traveling through the shared political border. The Phoenix Police Department ranks number one in the use of deadly force in the United States. In this special issue, we want to provide space for the diverse stories, griefs, memories, rages, and histories of this region.

The creative work in this issue considers the landscape and its people with the complexity, care, joy, and grief they deserve, and they showcase the multiplicity of historical and lived experiences of the Sonoran Desert.

• A Door in the Mountain: an Interview with Diana Marie Delgado (interview)

• Four paintings by Matthew Kelley (art)

• excerpts from "For Anthony" by Jennifer Juan (poetry)

• “The Way of the Ether,” “Countdown,” “Canyon of Carnage,” and “Bandwidth” by Jorge Ortega, translated by Kimrey Anna Batts (translation)

• "Hymns for Hosh" and "Shí beloved" by Amber McCrary (poetry)

• "Flesh" by Roya Khatiblou (short story)

• Two Untitled Poems by Verónica González Arredondo, translated by Allison A. deFreese (translation)

• "Chiron's Breach" by Faylita Hicks (poetry)

• “Night Letters (August 2020),” “Night Letters (September 2020),” and “Ghazal to Map the Distance” by Julie Swarstad Johnson (poetry)

• "film stills from Arizona (1940) for the modern viewer" by Isabel Cristina Lanzetta (poetry)

• "Boundaries" by Tiffany Fritz (short story)