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

crestline, ca

mom wakes me up. let's go, she shakes,

to the cabin. the pebbly strawberries are ripe down the hill.

sledding's good. the dry pine needles three feet thick.

i swear we send up smoke.

halfway down, the neighbor kids have dug

a cavern into ground, twenty feet wide and six feet deep,

tall bottles pressed as trophies into the soft dirt at the side

i tumble in and stare up & out at half sky

if i needed to

it would be good to live like this.

summer; my dad catches the june bug

with bare hands, tries on

fifties fatherhood,

then his short-shorts from the seventies.

july and  me on the long swing reading little women, with

jo amy beth meg coated in dust

from the scuffling of my feet making peace.

last year, a brown bear nudged the door open,

stood up to my grandma in her apron

"bonnie, stay in the bathroom," grandma called to my aunt,

and with all of the self-possession gained

from growing up on a great depression kansas

farm, shooed the bear out like it was one of six sisters.

winter: the time there was no food in the cabin and we

were too tired to go out. we ate like survivors of a thorough disaster. 

these places we retreat to.

at night, in the room at the top of the stairs, the raccoons

make their noises, beamed lamp eyes in.

we watch them watch us, two families perched

for safety in the place

that belongs to coyotes. 

after the last thing i remember

in utero again

this hospital bed.

so: eight left in me

 i assume.

dream-me rips out the iv,

and the blood spills forth

the way they open barrels of wine with a hammer

at sunset

and the vomit the orange of dying light.

two white blurs

hold my naked legs

catheter in, life

pumped in and out of me for awhile.

i rock side to side,

stare at the clock,

the night nurse comes in

tells me sweet nothings like

            you can leave at dawn

            your underwear are right there

            (you have a little vomit in your hair)

Alfred Steiglitz Composes A Letter to Georgia O'Keefe

this time you pose, for me

this time your throat finds light

you around the house,

musing, obscure

shallow bowl, you hold

what you find in the morning lakeside--

new stones/pieces of sepia/dark teeth,

the low wind.

i know you'll write me soon

 from those blooms you love

(your happiness there.) your absence

is a flat building, and mine

a tire iron. you muse, you,

known, your curled fingers

no apertures, new countries

new shapes, thick paint

Homeostasis, Boeing 737

Stranger-girl's head skis onto my shoulder, where it/she
rests heavily. That deep sleep where you
wake up scared to end.
I tilt my head to her fine hair,
brain turning heat to sound. (A low thermal hum--
I catalogue it as Unexpected, Nice.)

This girl could be my daughter, despite
us not having talked all flight.
The seat belt signs in the cabin dark-blur
to hands, reaching. Lesson: How the pieces fit,
or would, if bodies were not made to stay
warm on their own.

Window seat across the aisle is set precisely half down.
Sunlight hasn't stretched itself out in my lap yet.
(Another passenger, added weight.)
The flight attendant catches me staring at Girl
Stranger, less strange, short curly hair, and
I had a child once.

Didn't stay warm.

Quiet Things

1.
The cars rise towards us in the blue morning in pieces: first the headlights, then a shape, a speed, a color, maybe a glimpse of driver: white sedan with brights on, tall woman frowning into the horizon. Technically there are speed limits but in a big empty floodplain you can see a cop car for miles. You can also see us: me and Ben waiting for the bus, but no one slows down for us either. No one picks up hitchhikers out here. I think something about the way the land spreads out makes people nervous for their insides. And anyway we're not perched on the side with thumbs out or anything; there's a bench and usually I'm sitting normally and Ben is sprawled all over me. I watch the side of the road where the bus comes; he watches everything else. Birds. Joshua trees that look like people we know. The sky, which he gives me detailed updates on every five minutes.

2.
The thing about watching cars come (hoping for the bus) is you can't hope for every single one. You have to hope rarely, so that half the time your hope is right. I try to explain this to ben, but he just says he hopes I will one day make sense.
I say I hope he will one day appreciate me pulling our bus towards us through sheer power of thought. He hopes I find true love and happiness with Nutella. I hope he learns to like someone for more than two minutes.
And so on.

3.
Right now the sky is this pulsating deep water blue, and it's fragile, it's on these crazy baby giraffe legs. And...there's this lightness at the horizon like swimming up, almost too late, when your vision is just whiteness until you break the surface and breathe. The whole sky knows it is about to be held up by the sun, can feel it but it's just been dark for so long.....

4.
On the bus, we will go to the way back of the bus. I will take window seat. He will curl up into me, me holding onto folds of his sweatshirt. It's freakishly cold because Marnie doesn't like to drive with the windows up. Says it's too quiet. Marnie is partially deaf.
I will hold Ben's bony edges and things will be dark and quiet. I will hum, a little. He will drool on my sweater, continuously. I will feel a strange sorriness, as though we are both orphans, or eloping on my wishes.

Interruptions

A DREAM

In the night city the sirens come and take me to the Rodney King riots. I was conceived during one of them, so this makes dream sense. At the time my mom said "The riots are on TV again" and my dad said "Make love to me now, before the fire storm" (being dramatic and also being the author of several papers on Dresden) and he said it so passionately his glasses fogged up (this I know from my mother who has an eye for details, more specifically making them up.)
So there I stand, watching figures twist about each other almost like climbing. One leaps on another, limbs flailing and then sinking. And then I am flying into the middle of it, I have angel wings and my penis is a fire hose putting out the rage and exhaustion and neat tongues of flame. I smile. All of the people are frowning at me. They weren't done, that dream voice explains. You interrupted.

NOT A DREAM

I wake up inexplicably aroused.
At school I keep staring at this girl in English who I'm trying to decide if I've seen in a porno. It's unlikely, yes, but I need to see her body to be sure. I'll settle on waiting until spring, maybe fall. Maybe it will take the Santa Ana winds, red fire warning.

Attendance. Here. Next name.

I've switched to thinking about an article in the paper this morning. There's a girl who lives in Death Valley, on tribal lands, and the nearest school is two hours away. So every day this bus comes just for her-- because guaranteed free public education, dammit, and there's no other way for her to get to school--and she gets on and rides for two hours and gets off and goes to school and gets back on for two hours and goes home. There were pictures. I think: How lonely and how purposeful, to be the reason for a bus. I wonder if she pays attention, if the four hours in transit translates to pure motivation in life. I wonder if she feels cheated by shitty teachers. I wonder if when her mom asks about her day she only has things to say about the bus ride through desert, about the hawk she saw dive, the rocks radiating heat like a screen.
Maybe she just sleeps. Maybe she has existential angst on the potholes that resolves by the next speed limit sign.
I think I would start carving into the seats. It's hers, after all; it comes for her.
Passing period.
Earth History.
Volcanoes! someone says, because it's on the board.
I actually look up.
Mr. Gerard starts with Pompeii. His facial hair is thrown into movement with excitement. He has pictures: ash in the shape of absent people. But where did they go? the girl with thick eyebrows asks. To dust! Mr. Gerard exclaims. It was a city meticulously preserved. (Destroyed.) I hear, faintly, the song Dad always sings to Mom on his banjo:

You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn't hurt at all.

Okay, God, just please don't love me, my mom always says, holding her hands up, laughing, her glasses sliding.

Mr. Gerard starts morphing into The Man Upstairs. He's still talking about Pompeii, the magnificence of the mosaics, the magma turned lava turned solid, but all of a sudden I realize he is responsible, Earth History teachers everywhere are secretly God, and secretly responsible for all natural disasters. They read the aftermath. They make the stories. His beard is long and white, full of love and John Deere bulldozers.

Earth to Isaac, he booms at me.
I am not startled. It has always been mine. I interrupted it, the gory trauma of it.

Bell. Exit all. Sun streams in. Now only Gerard/God and I remain in the classroom.

A QUESTION

Why is magma under the surface, and lava above?

ANOTHER QUESTION

Why two words?

to franny from zooey

i know you are out there
you read once that forty cups of coffee could kill a man and drank
until you had to stay on the toilet to keep drinking
your bladder stretched out,
kidneys i'm sure freaking out
jesus christ, your body just a test

i can feel you eyeing ropes
learning knots, saving pills
sharp razors next to hospital bills
i am imagining you imbibing
everything drinkable in the house
drano febreze nyquil
tide will carry you away
you screaming
where else was it supposed to go
what makes me so fragile to the world

and where do i say thank you

For K.A.

Grief has blurred us, made us
both older and younger than we are.
Backs hunched into each other, arms reaching always--

Waking, you tell me your dreams,
and I try to pick out whether I had any or whether life
just proceeded without sleep after I closed my eyes

We are moving your stepfather's things,
and you are talking too much, and too fondly of your exes
(my gut curdles)

I think: if your mom were here-- what a perfect day
sunned shins and sorting through old letters
watching the setting sun over Homer's sea

Finally, sobered, I understand what wine dark means,
but not why people return, or why they don't
After all those years--

She is not. You cry into my sternum,
(me wishing I had more to offer, in the way of
spare parts) and your nightmares fight the pills.

This my first night without you in four days,
no one kicking things off my table with impossibly
long Michelangelo legs and I think

your body might be the Renaissance. I think
these days my parents hug me with force,
I think I once had a life outside of you--

It was yesterday you, me, the caretakers Night and Day
discussing the size of your mother's breasts.
Huge tits, sings Day, just huge--

I never noticed, Night says, hiding where?
You never saw her standing up, Day says in worship, motioning
her two cupped hands like tipped mountains.

And You Think I Don't Know Who I Am Or Why I Am Here

hey, listen, i know who i am, okay--
in say anything i would be
corey flood. sixty five
love songs to show for a boy
who wants to have sex because mimi
is gonna go to college and then what?

and in beauty and the beast no doubt i would be
the kid teacup who understands nothing but
in catcher i am no one but holden. i am
a professional, full time fiction,
a perpetual reflection.

but mirrors miss things.
look in a mirror to find
something, and miss the thousand other details.
mirrors only show you what you knew already
what you were looking for.

lately i am finding the bad in that--
today underwear in the shape of shorts will do for pants,
today a window of backyard will do for the outside,
today these tulips in the shape of lives seem human to me,
spinning out their petals too wide, too fast,
(just water waiting to be water again, for cell walls to fall)
and those strange black anthers
heaving dust to create
a message from hormones.

what happens to those when we die anyway?

i think i would feel better, maybe
get out of bed better,
if i could say for sure whether
this world is a house of cards or
an ant collection, whether
one piece missing is everything or nothing whether

a person being more or less than a person
is tragedy or casualty