The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Diaz, Natalie. "From the Desire Field." ("Poem-a-Day" series on the Academy of American Poets website, 2017).

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

“From the Desire Field,” a poem by Natalie Diaz published in the Poem-a-Day series by the Academy of American Poets in 2017, is composed of 19 stanzas of varying lengths. The poem was originally written in an epistolary exchange with the poet Ada Limón that resulted in eight poems, entitled Envelopes of Air. The poets freely discuss intimate details about their lives, situating the poems in political realities while charting a friendship. Questions about place, nature, the body, and language appear throughout the exchange.

In "From the Desire Field,” the speaker renames her anxiety and insomnia as a garden of desire. Building her metaphorical imagery on a line from Spanish poet Federico García Lorca that colors desire as green, Diaz simultaneously evokes desire as abundant and overwhelming. In the end, the speaker seeks comfort so as to "leave this thrashed field, and be smooth" (38).