i
A fire upon the hillside.
A grave upon the lane.
Plucking that flower from a hiking trail.
Beneath the balcony you call, first time, this initiate, by her name.
Never going back.
Never going again.
Never going to forgive.
Never going to the sea.
Never going to leave you alone, not with him.
Never going to be 23.
Never going back in there again.
When clouds were powers worth bowing to.
It was not literature then
the rain.
ii
I will not wash the cattle in the cornfield of the page.
I’ll turn circles in the shower and won’t declare a single war.
When I could not empty myself enough I ripped the filling out
and let an oyster shell split my tooth in two, and I went to graduate
school, for the healthcare, I admit,
and they tore it up by the root, and I turned 32,
and I met some people I liked and some I didn’t
and I fell in and out of love and was diagnosed
and misdiagnosed and went on and off some meds
and saw some things no one else could see and I had my addictions
and I got up and down and real down
and broke and quiet between my laptop
and sheets and some had died and I held to what I could and
everywhere Los Angeles grew.
One day, all this will belong to you.
iii
Between the books I’d
be come psychotic. I
want ed to set it down
before I knew who sets it
down. When I sat
and put a hole in my eye.
When I sat in the window of a house on fire. When
I saw through a hole what you could not see (we’ve
seen the other side us three).
When I got out the fire was all I saved.
Now I see tongues of gulls no one sees,
and cannot stop finding ways out, back
in again. City of—like you,
like me—touched.
***
Author photo by Sergio De La Torre
