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He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps when Mom unlocked and opened the front door. O God, he said.O God. He wants to kill me, Mom.

My baby brother has a bear that travels with him everywhere. He never lets the bear from sight. He hugs it in his crib at night. And when my brother’s diaper smells, the name of the bear is what he yells— which is a clever thing to do because my brother named it Pooh.

As a boy he played alone in the fields behind our block, six frame houses holding six immigrant families, the parents speaking only gibberish to their neighbors. Without the kids they couldn't say "Good morning" and be understood. Little wonder he learned early to speak to himself, to tell no one what truly mattered. How much can matter to a kid of seven? Everything. The whole world can be his. Just after dawn he sneaks out to hide in the wild, bleached grasses of August and pretends he's grown up, someone complete in himself without the need for anyone, a warrior from the ancient places our fathers fled years before, those magic places: Kiev, Odessa, the Crimea, Port Said, Alexandria, Lisbon, the Canaries, Caracas, Galveston. In the damp grass he recites the names over and over in a hushed voice while the sun climbs into the locust tree to waken the houses. The husbands leave for work, the women return to bed, the kids bend to porridge and milk. He advances slowly, eyes fixed, an animal or a god, while beneath him the earth holds its breath.

Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit, the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens, graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi. Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano poet whose songs still bank off Fresno's beer soaked gutters and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy you'd know we'd done this before. In Fresno, the bullets tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day. In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace. In my California, you can watch the sun go down like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes, red onions and the good salsa, wine and chapchae. Here, in my California, paperbacks are free, farmer's markets are twenty four hours a day and always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them, the priests eat well, the homeless eat well. Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown, everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown, everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy. No internment in the Valley. Better history texts for the juniors. In my California, free sounds and free touch. Free questions, free answers. Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.

The year I was born the atomic bomb went off. Here I'd just begun, and someone found the switch to turn off the world. In the furnace-light, in the central solar fire of that heat lamp, the future got very finite, and it was possible to imagine time-travelers failing to arrive, because there was no future. Inside the great dark clock in the hall, heavy brass cylinders descended. Tick-tock, the chimes changed their tune one phrase at a time. The bomb became a film star, its glamorous globe of smoke searing the faces of men in beach chairs. Someone threw up every day at school. No time to worry about collective death, when life itself was permeated by ordeals. And so we grew up, beneath an umbrella of acceptance. In bio we learned there were particles cruising through us like whales through archipelagoes, and in civics that if Hitler had gotten the bomb he'd have used it on the inferior races, and all this time love was etching its scars on our skins like maps. The heavens remained pure, except for little white slits on the perfect blue skin that planes cut in the icy upper air, like needles sewing. From one, a tiny seed might fall that would make a sun on earth. And so the century passed, with me still in it, books waiting on the shelves to become cinders, what we felt locked up inside, waiting to be read, down the long corridor of time. I was born the year the bomb exploded. Twice whole cities were charred like cities in the Bible, but we didn't look back. We went on thinking we could go on, our shapes the same, darkened now against a background lit by fire. Forgive me for doubting you're there, Citizens, on your holodecks with earth wallpaper— a shadow-toned ancestor with poorly pressed pants, protected like a child from knowing the future.

Of course you have faced the dilemma: it is announced, they all smirk and rise. If they are ultra, they remove their hats and look ecstatic; then they look at you. What shall you do?Noblesse oblige; you cannot be boorish, or ungracious; and too, after all it is your country and you do love its ideals if not all of its realities. Now, then, I have thought of a way out: Arise, gracefully remove your hat, and tilt your head. Then sing as follows, powerfully and with deep unction. They’ll hardly note the little changes and their feelings and your conscience will thus be saved: My country tis of thee, Late land of slavery, Of thee I sing. Land where my father’s pride Slept where my mother died, From every mountain side Let freedom ring! My native country thee Land of the slave set free, Thy fame I love. I love thy rocks and rills And o’er thy hate which chills, My heart with purpose thrills, To rise above. Let laments swell the breeze And wring from all the trees Sweet freedom’s song. Let laggard tongues awake, Let all who hear partake, Let Southern silence quake, The sound prolong. Our fathers’ God to thee Author of Liberty, To thee we sing Soon may our land be bright, With Freedom’s happy light Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King.

My cousin, Milton, worked for a cable company. The boy I knew when we were children had fists that were often clenched, his face set like an old man whose life had been so hard, it hardened him. But the man's hands opened to let more of the world in. He sent the funniest cards to family and friends at Christmas, laid down cable so others could connect. Yet, he lived alone, kept to himself much of the time, so when his sister found his body, he'd been gone a good while. He died young at fifty-seven, without fuss or bother. No sitting by the bedside or feeding him soup. He just laid himself down like a trunk line and let the signal pass through.

bijan been dead 11 months & my blue margin reduced to arterial, there’s a party at my house, a house held by legislation vocabulary & trill. but hell, it’s ours & it sparkle on the corner of view park, a channel of blk electric. danny wants to walk to the ledge up the block, & we an open river of flex: we know what time it is. on the ledge, folk give up neck & dismantle gray navigation for some slice of body. it’s june. it’s what we do. walk down the middle of our road, & given view park, a lining of dubois’ 10th, a jack n jill feast, & good blk area, it be our road. we own it. I’m sayin’ with money. our milk neighbors, collaborate in the happy task of surveillance. they new. they pivot function. they call the khaki uniforms. i swift. review the architecture of desire spun clean, & I could see how we all look like ghosts. 3 squad cars roll up at my door & it’s a fucking joke cuz exactly no squad cars rolled up to the mcdonald’s bijan was shot at & exactly no squad cars rolled up to find the murders & exactly no one did what could be categorized as they “job,” depending on how you define time spent for money earned for property & it didn’t make me feel like I could see less of the gun in her holster because she was blk & short & a woman, too. she go, this your house? I say yeah. she go, can you prove it? It say it mine. she go ID? I say it mine. she go backup on the sly & interview me going all what’s your address—don’t look! & hugh say I feel wild disrespected. & white go can you explain that? & danny say how far the nearest precinct? & christian say fuck that. & white go can you explain that? I cross my arms. I’m bored & headlights quit being interesting after I called 911 when I was 2 years old because it was the only phone number I knew by heart.

Your hand on my jaw but gently and that picture of you punching through snow to bring two deer, a gopher, and a magpie to the old Highwalker woman who spoke only Cheyenne and traced our footprints on leather she later chewed to soften. We need to know in America there is still blood for forgiveness. Dead things for the new day.

My darling turns to poetry at night. What began as flirtation, an aside Between abstract expression and first light Now finds form as a silent, startled flight Of commas on her face — a breath, a word ... My darling turns to poetry at night. When rain inspires the night birds to create Rhyme and formal verse, stanzas can be made Between abstract expression and first light. Her heartbeat is a metaphor, a late Bloom of red flowers that refuse to fade. My darling turns to poetry at night. I watch her turn. I do not sleep. I wait For symbols, for a sign that fear has died Between abstract expression and first light. Her dreams have night vision, and in her sight Our bodies leave ghostprints on the bed. My darling turns to poetry at night Between abstract expression and first light.