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They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.

coming from a place where we meandered mornings and met quail, scrub jay, mockingbird, i knew coyote, like everyone else, i knew 
cactus, knew tumbleweed, lichen on the rocks and pill bugs beneath, rattlers sometimes, the soft smell of sage and the ferment of cactus pear. coming from this place, from a place where grass might grow greener on the hillside in winter than in any yard, where, the whole rest of the year, everything i loved, chaparral pea, bottle brush tree, jacaranda, mariposa, pinyon and desert oak, the kumquat in the back garden and wisteria vining the porch, the dry grass whispering long after the last rains, raccoons in and out of the hills, trash hurled by the hottest wind, the dry grass tall now and golden, lawn chairs, 
eucalyptus, everything, in a place we knew, every thing, we knew, little and large and mine and ours, except horror, all of it, everything could flame up that quickly, could flare and be gone.

the place of consequence, the station of his embrace. Or else I’m not son enough to see the innocence and the spiritual fiddlings in the uneven floorboards and joists, in the guttural speech of the pipes, in the limp and the lack of heat. All we need, all we really need is light! And let there be a roof with no leaks. Oh father landlord, fill up all our breaches. He gives himself to the cracks; into the chinks my father lowers his bone, the do-it-yourself funeral. He holds the wires in his teeth. He strips the insulation back. If it’s black, it’s juiceless; if it’s red, elegiac.

Lapo Elkman gazes out from the frame with a come-hither look. His wrists have soft bracelets around them & his shirt, black, is open. Looped on his neck pale strands of beads hang which causes a ribbon of shadow at his nipple. His facial hair, bleached by the sun, is brown-white. Tatiana Santa Domingo wears a floral printed dress. It is summer where she’s photographed or warm enough for clothes that light. Earrings perhaps of three golden hoops or two hang obscured in the shade of her hair. Her right cheek is touching the locks of Bianca Brandolini d’Adda whose own dress is dim purple satin. It has a black strap of lace an inch thick which, at her waist, intersects with another lace band even thicker & full of arabesques & Fleur De Lis. This lace is just above her belly which is pressed to the belly of Margherita Maccapani Missoni. White, with faint, almost invisible as flowers (maybe dots?) her sundress, exposes her shoulder. The left one is touching the patterned black stars on the silk frock partly covered by spilling brown hair, at its longest end, curled & falling from the head of Alexi Neideliski. Andrea Stefanowicz Sabrier lays on his belly wearing Ray-Bands & is laughing. Beside him on his back, with arm muscles slightly swollen, hands clasped behind his head & eyes closed Julio Mario Santo Domingo III laughs as well. Both are in blue jeans & t-shirts. Her blue & black checkered flannel clad shoulder hovers over the face of her sister whose cheek is buried in wildflowers. Each wears a ring, one is a cylinder of patterned white gold the other, more baroque, appears Victorian but isn’t wholly visible. Olympia & Fiona Scarry are un- comfortably positioned in these clothes & rings. Olympia’s eyes are wide, bright, but Fiona’s are so full of shadow it seems they aren’t there which gives her the look of the un-dead. White wife beater, ample hair in his pits, crotch the center of gravity here in this picture Harry Morton is laying on a bed. One arm behind his head it’s tattooed almost classically, twice, with illegible symbols. His slacks have grey stripes, they pour into a boot pressed on the soft white sheet at the right at the left sink into a blood-colored comforter, velvet. The chocolate toned pea-coat he’s wearing half-way reveals a hand, it grips the hem near the satin-coco lining. She has the the face of a mermaid, & the eyes Princess in her title, Elizabeth von Thurn und Taxis looks poised before apporaching the coffin. Count Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo is giddy & drenched having waded in the sea in his button up clinging his smile is one that gods give their children after hooking up with mortals for the fix. On a half-pipe ornate with graffiti the honorable Sophia Fermor-Hesketh rests a skate-board on her knee in black tights. She wears Docs. Her hair is blonde, mostly covered by a hat her dress is lycra black this is Madonna as eternal return. Yellow seal with ingratiating smile, caterpillar-seal hybrid antennae blue, markings pink, body yellow, silver dolphin, dolphin with desert-camo designs & dolphin dressed for jungle warfare these inflatables are harbored at the edge of a pool in which Bianca Brandolini D’Adda is floating on a sting-ray shaped raft on her belly hands under her chin three bracelets no bathing suit she’s swimming in her dress which is soaked & her legs are raised, ankles crossed this makes a diamond- shape between with liquid topaz. He has the cork in his teeth. In his left hand a half- glass of red. He is looking away at invisible friends & the ocean is beyond a grey mist with white bands Carlo Mondavi has hair that arcs at middle point a frozen cascade beneath which at right we see his ear half a sea-shell. The filigree is white, the buttons white impacted silk, the dots silk on sheer, on her blouse with short sleeves, she is blonde, her brother blonde his shirt white his scarf red she leans back on his chest his hand over his heart he takes an oath, Alexandre & Josephine de la Baume their lips closed eyes cold, unexpressive & imposing. JFK twice on a monitor his face & his back he is speaking Jared Kushner looks relaxed there’s a copy of the New York Observer on his knees which are bent he sits up against a wall smiles easily cropped black hair dark tie & slacks & white shirts by a window in the city. It’s a beach-house kitchen. Arnie Hammer’s by the sink. The head of his acoustic guitar nears its lip, & his ass sits near a rack where dishes dry there is one tiny elegant hole in his t-shirt, in his collar which is loose, low, reveals his long neck & hairy chest. The Corona in his right hand sweats. There is white foam all over my face which began in a canister, moved as blue-gel expelled by air-pressure then diluted with water was smeared on my cheeks, between my nose, lip & down onto my chin. I am shaving naked I have three rolls of fat each bigger than the last. Looking in the mirror I cough, draw the phlegm from my lungs with a suck roll it onto my tongue stick my tongue out examine phlegm’s color for blood but there’s none it’s like mud- infused egg yolk. I spit it down into the sink with the little hairs spiking the cream. The cigarette pulls like a kite from her body on a long arm suspended by wind. Her tea-cup she holds it waist high & with one finger pins the fabric lightly to the bottom of the saucer. The cigarette ash is precarious her dress has five little shoelaces white at sternum’s end. Margherita Maccapani Missoni is happy. Sophia Barclay has a grey cardigan under which she wears a Disney dress. Hayley Bloomingdale is blonde she has a kerchief on her head a thin slice of melon in her fingers a white strand of pearls her bangs are one soft shard that hook her chin. She turns like she noticed us following her, & ready with her smile meets our eyes Ivanka Trump is moving, carefree, through the city. A young Thomas Jefferson, Adrea Casiraghi stares proudly at the future of the world & finds it splendid, brown hair cascading over his wool grey coat his white shirt reveals his marshmallow chest which contrasts with his granite chin & jaw. Dasha Duhkohva reclines on a marble table outlined by hydrangeas in jeans & striped shirt a grey trench coat thrown over her body. In a little row-boat, in a tank-top across which in marker has been written River Keeper Amanda Hearst crowned by a loose, densely beaded tiara. Black rubber fishing boots swallowed her legs. She’s drawing an enormous black tarp around her torso & smiling while her head tilts to the left.

Dark thing, make a myth of yourself: all women turn into lilacs, all men grow sick of their errant scent. You could learn to build a window, to change flesh into isinglass, nothing but a brittle river, a love of bone. You could snap like a branch—No, this way

It’s not paradise I’m looking for but the naming I hardly gave a thought to. Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness among the animals before I started listening to the news. Call it the hint I had about the knowledge that would explode. In the meantime, which is real time plus the past, you’re swishing your skirt and speaking French, which is more than I can take, which I marvel at like a boy from the most distant seat in the Kronos Dome, where I am one of so many now I see the point of falling off. There’s not enough seats for us all to attend the eschaton. This ecstasy that plants beauty on my tongue, so that if it were a wing, I’d be flying with the quickness of a hummingbird and grace of a heron, is so much mercy in light of the darkness that comes. Who would say consolation? Who would say dross? Not that anyone would blame them. All night I hear so many echoes in the forest I’m tempted to look back, to save myself in hindsight, where all I see is the absence of me. Where all I hear is your voice, which couldn’t be more strange. How to go on walking hand in hand without our bodies on the path we made for our feet, talking, talking?

No one loves you more ... more ... more ... There were sincere lies everywhere placed directly before the next step. Does everyone pretend, part of alive I am proposing words — All structures have crumbled in earliest death. I’m crossing the yellow sands It’s so hard to know without relating it, to you shaping a heart, take hold of me and someone says I don’t get it! You don’t have to have love, or you do, which? I don’t think you do; before the explosion? I was here without it and have been in many places loveless. I don’t want you to know what I’m really thinking or do I, before creation when there might be no “I knew” Everything one’s ever said not quite true. He or she be- trays you; why you want to hurt me ... bad Want to, or just do? Treason was provoked everywhere even here, by knowing one was one and I was alone, a pale hue. The sky of death is milky green today, like a poison pool near a desert mine. Picked prickly pear fruit and I tasted it, then we drove on, maybe to Yarnell. These outposts where I grew up; I didn’t do that I have no ... identity, and the love is an object to kick as you walk on the blazing bare ground, where ... sentimental, when what I love, I ... don’t have that one word. This fire all there is ... to find ... I find it You have to find it. It isn’t love, it’s what?

Once more the bright blade of a morning breeze glides almost too easily through me, and from the scuffle I’ve been sutured to some flap of me is freed: I am severed like a simile: an honest tenor trembling toward the vehicle I mean to be: a blackbird licking half notes from the muscled, sap-damp branches of the sugar maple tree

This, we tiptoe. This, we flower in euphemism. The street has swallowed itself into border. Into railroad track. This, where the bus line ends. This, where little boys bike across curfew and into eulogy. This, where board-slapped windows domino into mansions. Runaway men into joggers. This, where Oak Park River Forest alumni rep westside, Redlands East Valley minstrels “Gangsta Day” during spirit week. This, where the grass and the quiet lull mothers to sleep. This, where your heart is not yet a restless telephone wire shackled to the ankle of every one you have ever loved after sunset. This, where the news stations tell you everything you know about what lives across your street, outside of your living room window, at the end of your driveway. This, deliberate. This, abrupt. This, sloppy stitching. Here, you are exception, urban, and articulate. The black friend that let them poke pencils through your kink that one time while you curled a trembling smile, pretending not to be token or voodoo doll, half house, half field a Susie Carmichael or Huxtable. The black family in a White House ran north and bought the plantation. This all too familiar of being someplace but not. You were raised on “twice as good.” Mama left the westside when you were two. You were raised into valley-girl accent. Your voice lost all of its skyline until you went to high school through metal detectors. You were raised on ditches and division streets. Here, where you were born before you were conceived. Here, where your cousin lives in the basement. Here is your first real boyfriend the first tongue in your mouth, and first call from the county. Here is the splintered wall your back will know. Here, where you are no bourgeois success story, just lucky enough to slip through cracks and make it to your front door each night. Here is where your ashes will be scattered. Here is your home 6 years from now. Here is your home 50 years ago. Here is your redemption skin. Your corner store. Your corner stone. Here is your Gramma’s house and dusted porcelain and stuffed bears on the living room walls. Here, where everything grows without permission. Here, where sunflowers rise from the potholes each and every summer.

Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking through bare rooms over my head, opening and closing doors. What could he be looking for in an empty house? What could he possibly need there in heaven? Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches? His love for me feels like spilled water running back to its vessel. At this hour, what is dead is restless and what is living is burning. Someone tell him he should sleep now. My father keeps a light on by our bed and readies for our journey. He mends ten holes in the knees of five pairs of boy’s pants. His love for me is like his sewing: various colors and too much thread, the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces clean through with each stroke of his hand. At this hour, what is dead is worried and what is living is fugitive. Someone tell him he should sleep now. God, that old furnace, keeps talking with his mouth of teeth, a beard stained at feasts, and his breath of gasoline, airplane, human ash. His love for me feels like fire, feels like doves, feels like river-water. At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind and helpless. While the Lord lives. Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone. I’ve had enough of his love that feels like burning and flight and running away.