Mercy

            St. Christopher Animal Hospital has been here since the sixties and will be here until the Big Quake comes. Flat, low, and beige, a lot like a bomb shelter. Mostly it's moms coming in. The pet has started acting weird, so the travel cage is found, the kid is consoled, driven to school, and she drives back, fixes her hair, puts on the track pants, and comes here. She is blonde, loud, friendly. I tell her to leave the non-human family member with me and I will take good care, move slowly, strike painlessly.

            Sometimes they want to stay as it happens. I try to talk them out of it. They always make things complicated. The pet is whining and they are asking me if I think they should be looking in its eyes as it dies or holding it in their arms. I say I don't know but I need to be able to get 450 mg of pentobarbitone into the body. They tear up; this is where the crumpled tissues from the purse come out. Should I leave, they ask. It might be for the best, I say, and nod. I am hugged, pressed against their breasts. From 11 pm to 10 am Monday to Friday I am in charge of euthanasia. Saturday and Sunday I do toenail clipping on large dogs and exotics. Whatever you use, the key is that it be sharp. Dull, you don't know where the thing will end up. Anything's possible. 

Splendor County Crime Log

Thursday, April 15

1:02 AM Merlin's Magic Pizzeria was broken into for the seventh time this month. A sheriff responded but did not arrive in time to apprehend the suspect.

Friday, April 16

3:43 PM Staff at the Splendor Recreation Center pool reported a father and son having an altercation by the deep end. Everything was OK. 

11:22 PM A 22-year-old Splendor man whom a sheriff's deputy spotted being pulled along on his skateboard by a dog was arrested Friday for being under the influence of heroin, a sheriff's report says.

Saturday, April 17

9:41 PM Reporting party called about loud noise coming from her neighbors in 1600 block of Woodland Dr. Investigation revealed domestic abuse situation.

Sunday, April 18

7:03 AM Woman from 1600 block of Woodland Dr. reported missing.

Adaptation

            All desert plants know how to be desert plants. Doesn't sound like much, but you can't say the same for people. Desert plants know how to homestead. Chamise'll start a fire like a match-- flammable oils. Burns out everything, so the next generation has space, ash for fertilizer. Creosote, on the other hand-- creosote makes a toxin and puts it in the soil so nothing else can grow, not even other creosote plants. Can't figure out how that works-- how the plant itself keeps living, if it kills the other? Sheer stubbornness, probably. The best is the stunted, runty pines, in the washes. Those cones need fire to open. Destroys the tree, releases its children. The only other trees out here are the windbreaks. Long, perfect lines, like a fence. They stop looking like trees when you plant them like that. More like bodyguards, big foreign types.

If You Save Me

It went like this: The orange trees flashing past like rays of the sun reminded me of a word my mother says sometimes when she sighs—Aztlán. It means this state of mind, I told the car. It means something lost that you keep looking for. Like a child.

Storms

Storms

before

Hannah counting seconds. I realize it isn't lightning; the power just went. And then thunder coming under us, shaking, small rattlings, spices in cupboards, a book off the shelf. The file cabinet goes sailing on the yellow lino and Hannah twirls herself up in my skirt. Haven't felt anything like this in Clementine since they built it. I was around, little. They were halfway through I guess-- and wooden skeletons don't hold up very well. Had to start over. Everything still mostly wood, bank, houses, grocery. The cemetery, white painted railings, dead grass, fungus coming up like flowers. The church, and the light through the slats. That year I took up whittling. I liked the changing of it. Still shaking. This is bigger, but we're not in a skeleton this time. Nona, Nona, whispers Hannah. Nona look at the window. Out the window, I remind her, and then look. Trees pass by like rain, the world spinning around us. Tremendous noise from the basement. I see a flash of the church and then a thick stand of firs coming to rest, mist. I shut my eyes and push my palms in.

after

Nona's hands are over her eyes. I'm trying to pry them off, but she's stubborn. There's trees outside now, the forest from the edge of town. I give up with Nona and run to the other window. The cemetery's where the orchard used to be only the headstones are sinking in, slumping and tired. I think that's an edge of a coffin maybe. And over there-- in the long hair of the grass-- where there are no markings, those are bones. And a way off, the church stands shining, unharmed. It's Sunday, Nona says, and pushes me to go get my dress on.            

            We'll go sing hymns and sit in the back pine.

            And after?

            To the orchard. Pay our respects. 

Unending Fire

what is it about

particles, that makes them jump

from themselves, is it

the way waves never

end, but are carried torches,

the old flame you hold

still, as truth, listen

i hear you tell the story

of your own death best

but what do you know

about electrons, how come

the pull of a dense

center sometimes fails,

how can you be storm and eye

to me, when the rest

holds just nothingness,

holy ashes at the altar,

sing: fukushima

sing

in defense of objectifying my roommate's body

carrie's derriere

(hidden or mooning me post morning shower)

is clearly a climactic work of art

which god spent extra time

perfecting, and that's why world peace is not here yet.

he forgot about it.

creating the world's most perfectly porcelain

finely crafted behind this dear earth has ever seen

was a little distracting

             for god.

carrie i wrote you a poem

it's to make you stop yelling

about how you hate your ass

it's beautiful! it's like

um

a basketball mated with a bathtub

in a hot way!

sorry

i was trying to be poetic

ok

no more

ok