The Marine
Sundays my father made us chorizo
we still begged to skip church
four bad kids in line for communion,
recanting silence
Sundays my father made us chorizo
we still begged to skip church
four bad kids in line for communion,
recanting silence
Soon I’ll need assurances, a shower, coffee, pills.
In the fuzz of dawn, I’m a bell
and time’s the clapper, rung until
one state of being over-rings another—
I wrote, day after day, about the bee
in the begonia – bees, I should say, though it was only ...
I don’t smoke weed, I smoke palm
trees. I rise into clouds like
the 110-105 interchange. I take back
airspace from a LAPD chopper, examining
Yes—alone, I could stop for anything.
Fossil bed at a river’s wrist. Hello
aoudad on Blue Mountain, javelina
gnawing cactus. Stinky the cat hiding
in a closet. Every bee takes an hour
and that hour is the bee’s. Vultures braid through ...
Between sagebrush and the lichened rocks,
a covey of quail employ themselves.
Light disperses in the spray, and a seal
ducks under again. Home for them. ...
In Belgrade in my hotel room
I return to the self portraits
from the earlier work:
smoking in the tub
while reading
texts on the New Art Practice.
When I step out of the bathroom...
Trucks shuffle in the slow lane.
Mt. Shasta’s a crazy white cone.
I drive as fast as I dare.
Car my shelter, my tiny house ...
The 5, the 101, the 10
Suavecito for President
A funeral procession out of City Terrace
No ICE on the overpass ...
When I love another person, after I close the circle I say, “I know that things are not always all the way one way.” This is an idealized ...
Three weeks after my husband's cremation
I cancelled the contract
with the exterminator.
Now, I share a home with arthropods.
They teach me to inhabit
hollow spaces. Their movements expand
each room. An ant scurries ...
You have to remember the Aspen grove;
the white stalks of trees, their stuttering leaves--
the descending quiet. Vesper sparrows. ...
Think remember map our
every you every us every night every darkness
lay fear down
lay in sadness
carry this acre
taken from a map ...
Steve speaks slowly, and because he is the
Housing Association President,
he also speaks in detail, willing nothing ...
Plumes of dust. Forming. Dancing. Dissipating.
A lone dust dancer lingers. ...
Our contract was balletic—
you took from me the rabbits spooked
inside their still damp nest. ...
Never much good at judging distances
or my own physical strength, I imagine
this morning that I could swim across
the Mississippi, be in Illinois by lunch.
I can see it clear from here; the grass
you’d be surprised is just as brown yet
still it’s humming: other. O! to emerge ...
The mountain I hadn’t met lamented. It was you’re welcome; I’m sorry you don’t belong. It stood, said you don’t fit—sun hitting its middle ...
And the blades of glass prepare for dormant;
think, think in stillness, under winter's palm in
swift approach; desire now this return to dust, ...