Chaparral

For fourteen years, I dreamed of sharpening.
Claws on claws. Teeth on teeth. Boots
and buckles. Wasp words.
Guitars gnashing
quick-blooded
and hot.
Rumble dirt
road drives.
Tannin seeping
in the throat.

Name it in the seeplands.
Manzanita gnarled and banded
like bacon, crisped
in the heat.
Salt gathers in flats. Sage
drinks the radiation, turns it silver
blue. Goat’s beard
and poppies

juiced up with burns. The blown
dust trail. Cut a yucca while
it dreams of the
moth’s kisses.

Wade out the sand creek in rubber
boots. Startle the quail.

Name it in the roadrunner. The fence
lizard’s sudden dart.

The dragonflies are conspiring
in the junipers. The cottonwoods
know about parades.
They know
dispersal. The creek knows laughter.

And relief.

The heron in stasis sharpens against
the air. His neck waves,
a cool white curve
aping the branch
in the wind.

Trade Winds

When you retreat to your island
of volcanic copper cliffs and startled fish,
I send you half-coconuts filled

with fresh water
They float their way
across the sea

You count the nests of migrant shorebirds
which squabble over chalk
and stay up all night

to learn the secrets of their dances
You send me sea beans, pods and shells
letters dipped in wax

I send you fruits grown in
snow, bouquets of unusable coins
sealed coolers loaded with

books, flares and sparklers
Shearwaters which nest behind
waterfalls are your specialty

admiral terns with offended crests
small secretive owls which regard you
sternly from the sandy beds

You inspire their season
and you’ll never discover their catalyst

it must be your eyelashes
Who wouldn’t want to wing

across deserts and tinfoil waters
To sit
in the cup of your hands

Poem

baby was a black sheep/baby was a whore

The lights came up at the dance and we were all blinking and pursed in sweaty vests and withered corsages. The beat had come to a stop with a feedback cough and the bent janitors were already beginning to arrive with long clawed arms to clean up the shredded streamers and sequins on the floor. Safety pins were loosening, strapless bras migrating, tights running, slips were, we were taking off our heels and scuffed black loafers under the photo display with its scumbled night of grays and whites and grays, its ring of plastic magnolias or the plastic cherry stars glistening with foil. Over our heads silver the slanted text, the little narrative. Drained tanks of water and plastic cups. Mascara running and rubbing in sloughs, shadow gathering in uneven creases, gel giving up its hold, 5 o’clock shadows lengthening at 1 am. If we had left earlier our groping would have been held in a framework of dark sleep and highblooded rhythm and lights. But now we cannot go back, we see the dissolving starfish made of cardboard, the disco ball made singular, our partner’s pores in fluorescent relief. The jock and the geek and the queens and the sluts and the horrorsullen all standing again in the great room, bros and hos and bois under the paneled ceiling stuck with pencils. In her tiara and smudged raspberry lipstick the elected blonde was brushing the black sheep’s hair behind the ear for her. Smiling now was a new art, more sly and brash. And the chords of the rock opera, made of bass and smash and broken
flashes, god yes, then begin—-

Anacoluthon

Finished with our auguries
we’ve packed up our styptic wands at last:
tools point by point into the cordovan

box, box of the iron preceptor.
Here we will store them with
the alleles that echo on the verso

vital and wracked
and every knap a broader wheal.

[syringe with a jewel of red      ]

Ah! look how the monument’s owls rise up out of their amphorae
before ephemerids can retire to the aquaducts
in middens of the morn

folded and slack
and no illuminated burning dump.

[cut telephone lines      ]

So far from the fora, we still dreamed in geometrics and linens,
the hot dust gathered from battles two tolls away.
What tents we pitched in stolen greaves

rusted and flat
and wrung from the cracked shins of slaves.

[piled sandbags      ]

Suspended in spex under pumice in casts,
we went moonless, trying to swallow wine spoiled
by thoughts numismatic under our tongues

garlands graffitied
by hoary weddings in houses of fauns.

[armored cars and scrims      ]

What we knew of that sunk country
was penny nails and the dewclaws of
small rumbling gods of volcanoes

pulled shining out of ash.

[recycling plants]

O undecorated argosy

[silver tissue and styrofoam      ]

O mummers

[3-D and HD    ]

O Ariadne winding up the kite
closing her unlined eyes
smelling the minotaur’s sweat

[flatscreen    ] [refrigerator hum    ] [breaking glass    ]

Suicide Girls

“she beguiles today/tomorrow watch her crawl” – Atrixo, “Paramount Doll”
Buffy dusting the last vamp in leather
beside cardboard tombstones
in rich floodlights
and heels she is
Cali girl in the valley
of the shadow of
slayage
Jess in the army jacket she is
Angela Chase all over her wall
Me stuck on Bikini Kill and show us your riffs
let’s all be Tank Girl for Halloween
Jeremy in shaved eyebrows and spats
listening to static Errol with his pianos
of glass his jowled pianos
it’s “come as you aren’t” Buffy said.
that’s the point!
Willow’s sitting
next to me in Earth and Space but she’s named
Lauren a glitter goth aiming
her energy ball at the thick neck and jersey
two rows up back blank chatting up the bops
his burns he tells them are from the bonfire
when smashed he tossed in the aerosols
she is concentrating her “energies”
he twitched when she let fly
she gave me Tool on a mixtape and
Pixie Stix and told me about her
Ritalin smelt like toaster
waffles called her devil
she kept explaining the difference
pentacle/pentagram
crisp notebook paper mechanical pencils defeated texbooks
with broken spines
in Art Portishead Romeo + Juliet a millon paintings of calla lilies fairies rasta lions
in Bio the fetal pig with hooves little almonds
fine white-snout hairs sealed formaldahyde eyes
Xander on the lightbox saying “”It’s funny how the Earth never opens up and swallows
you when you want it to.”
Ashley she hung herself with her karate belts
in the garage the news exists as a mind rift
a slipped disc /
a string of lies and uses
her friends decided to wear overalls and white tees
for her it was the same thing they wore everyday
we were 3/4 of the way through Lord of the Flies
reviving Ophelias Celias Cordelias and other –ilias who
break your heart
shake your confidence
baby
teachers were always burying time
capsules in those days
when we dug it up it was full
of letters red ribbons
Belinda Campbell the Austrailian’s hymn to
Kurt Cobain and shattered brows
didn’t we all want to be clever and British with a side of
cowboy Courtney Love
broken tiaras loose mascara
Buffy jamming the sword to the hilt in the boy vampire she loves
destroyed and stuck on the bloodless
all those Seethers
“She made me feel like a real human being.
That’s not
the kind of thing you just forgive.”
but honey everyone live’s heat-seeking in the end