A better-looking version of you
fleshes out the interesting impulses
you suppress inside that
mediocre sweatshirt.
At last your fantastical love
scenes receive proper lighting.
Your meandering dreams?
Sharpened by focus groups.
In the urn of the lengthening day
The man who will die on my street
Is walking backward toward traffic
With his shirt on backward,
A bright orange vest, backward, and
Although he stinks,
I love to hold his small
brokenness on my lap,
reeking teeth worn down
on a metal cage to almost
nothing, tongue that hangs
clear out when …
To be a traitor is to trade—
Take, for example, the blue macaw
of my childhood, traded
for two rocks of crack
and a dime of blow. My block raided
February is checking my e-mail
while waiting at the drive-thru
dry cleaners to pick up my husband’s
work shirts, pressed razor sharp
and the girl asking from the backseat,
“What …
Cooked, the socks, the pantry stocked,
Thanksgiving dinner for twenty.
Crab apples around the turkey on a platter I’d serve
Modeled from a photograph.
The ruffled hem floats
as you spin.
Of them all,
the one you like
most.
The ruffled hem, as you
spin, opens
around your …
Freeways connect
The Golden State
I-5
Droughts
Prisons
3 strikes
You’re out
Life is no
Ball game
Displacing families
Generations
From
San Francisco to
Chavez Ravine
Giants throw children
In …
O sister on the other side
of the mirror, all sass and vinegar.
Galaxy of lace and petticoats
and pretty things swept under
the radar. You are a vintage
ditty, hiding …
How does the night move?
There must be a moment
when it moves over your body.
You are half night, half day then,
you are a sister to the moon,
