on the front of the passenger train, they were holding
hands and had a whole plan to clean
the concrete twenty-two stories below the ledge
of the mixed-use downtown
tower. To really make it shine. The party line
is getting me good. I keep turning
my face to the flashbulb in an effort to seem like someone
with no secrets, and now when I see other people
framed and beaming, I want to know what they’re keeping
in. All those holiday moments, tacked
to the fridge or strung up with wire and eyelets. All that sin—
Five by Seven
Really, when people have photographs of themselves
displayed on their walls, I just assume
they have died and it is their ghosts
who’ve invited me over, their ghosts with whom
I’m sharing a meal, making small
talk about all the bodies and trash on Mount Everest.
Oh lacquered ghosts, so high on your own
finished triptych of fetes
and feats and the corresponding assurance
you go unforgotten—let’s
go out. From the recent restaurant
boom, infer a citywide uptick in rage-ravaged homes.
People want new spots to fight, to squall
and snipe, lose their appetites, be brought
the chalkboard special, not touch it,
see it whisked to the kitchen and scraped
out back for a dog to eat, but that’s cool—dogs
have to eat, too—
California
We often ate late by flameless
candles and took turns choosing
how best to be disposed of.
I want to be buried. I want everyone
to be buried. I realize there’s scarcely
a spare acre left in the ground, but I just
can’t do without the indecorous
transit from parlor to plot.
I need the array of daytime headlights
jolting the arid access road,
the only remembrance that matters.
Don’t make a speech.
For years I would wonder whether
the man who attacked me—
in his memory, did the event of it
persist as a dull sort of flash? Then
he died and became himself
just a flash in the mind of the world.
Now I wonder—is he anywhere?
I don’t believe in Hell and also I don’t
believe in nothing, so that leaves only
Heaven. I have a couple
questions. It is my understanding
that the weather in Heaven
has only a single setting,
which is PLEASANT. I haven’t
spent real time in California, but friends
of mine who’ve moved there
say it’s challenging, absent the changing
of the seasons, to remember when things
took place. With reference to always
the lodgepole pine and the low-bent
needlegrass, you get confused.
Dates and sequences, even the people
involved. You can almost imagine
the whole thing was somebody else.
A Space to Train and Exit
Maybe California’s just plain easier,
with the commonness
of outbuildings. Raw-looking cedar or sheet
metal walls and a runnel
of sun getting in through the roof seams.
Position the heavy bag, tighten the eyebolt,
twenty-five right hooks. Or pull up
a chair and compose your suicide note.
A space to train and exit.
The purpose of having a body at all
is to practice, to practice
the keeping alive of domestic
animals and plants. You dispense to yourself
some minerals and water. You expose
yourself to the sun and it helps
you remember to do the same for those
in your charge. If you could equip
them with all they require, or make them
require nothing, you wouldn’t
need your body at all.
Magpie
Unusual rain of late, and a new weed
