The brown lady of the south is knocking at my door,
carrying bags of oranges she grows inside her yard.
It looks like a friendly gesture, but I know of her wily chops.
She's come by way of the canyons, and the friction makes her hot.
...
Amphitrite was alone due to matters of shipping-
perhaps a war or an off-season storm,
when another god came and gave her a spray,
and left her aglow on a warm, sandy shore.
...
Unheralded in life,
they don't fear death,
and leave their parents
to fold up a uniform.
...
Beatrice rides shotgun, just like a dog,
until she runs out of gas and walks home
by herself, past the cantina where where
she used to take names- sixteen and pristine-
...
Saturday afternoons mean
you push the dreaded pencil,
swirling dusky lead into periods
black as coal.
...
Consciousness is a lean-to
I've constructed throughout
the Siskiyou. It bears the
screeching of the scrub jays,
...
Youth can be a desert
where the shadows are
definitive, or a trek through
the rocks when there's water
...
Ripped from their moorings,
petals set sail, scorched and
limp in the high desert wind,
blown to the odeon, buying
...
Maria's in Guatemala still
trying to scale volcanoes,
half buried in terraced fields
of petty rage and discontent.
...