#22

Skipping rocks across the lake
that is the parking lot,
the scratchy rhythm,
tiny sparks of pebble to pavement,

a galaxy of lit boredom
next to the liquor store,
the broken glass winking
at the pickup that peels out.

Heatwave thundercrack,
electric storm creasing itself
into pockets of sky, a shaky shout,
a single kid in the field, looking up

knowing what's coming next.

#21

A brainwave burst out,
sunflare's hairy arm,
the tarantula legs of electricity
separating from the globe.

Old paperbacks floating
the surface of a pool,
the chlorine misting the air,
warped paper lilypads.

X-ray vision through
the building, paperthin walls
copper wiring climbing
and multiplying in the crawlspaces.

A cat in the garage plays
with a crumpled up piece
of aluminum foil, the sound
white noise from a broken TV.

#20

The whole of the city is shut down
for no well-known reason,
just past 5:30, late fall darkness
lullabying the cars to sleep.

Not a single human form
on the streets of Los Angeles,
the wind taking a chance to settle
turn to concrete on the street.

The gas station glow, the humming
white and blue lettering chants
to you, and with nothing else to do,
try to figure out what it says.

When even those lights go out,
and it is silent, you glance down
at your feet--
a spider frantically climbing

over gravel,
looking for your body.

#19

The ceiling turns to leaf,
a cricket echo in the hallway.

Beneath my stomach,
intenstine turning to snake--
writhing up my torso
and out my chest--

its diamond face bursting
through my heart.

The crickets multiply.

#18

Traintracks crossing the hill
like stitches on a skull,
I'm writing your name
in a tree trunk with a switchblade
under the howl of coal.

I am here and nowhere, a shadow
on the car, watching pitchfork
orchards blur into a veined blur,
the inside of a kaledioscope filled
with orange, with bark, with leaves.

I'm writing your name
on this tree to pull attention away
from the words written in the dirt,
in brown slate wedged between
the roots of this angry tree,

its knots screaming to the train.

#17

Driving stakes in the ground,
scratching names in the wood
to make tombstones to tailpipes,
the cars that died on the journey
off the face of the earth.

In this field, the coordinates
of crisscrossing satellites merge
over one point, our melted cars
making a magnet to signal
the voice of a robot god.

All around us, the dirt rises
like waves, reaching up, cresting
and folding in on us, leaving
our faces, our bodies coated,
looking like natural warts on the landscape.

So when the sky turns silver,
metal roof curtain above us,
the nailhole constellations wink down
even though they can't see us,
even though they don't know

all we have done for them.

#16

This river, the floss of the world,
pulls empty cans down its pulse,
message-bottles across its surface
to strangers.

If I drink from its murky water,
I will speak through my chest
in code and in truth, someone's
long forgotten dream of a river.

If I lie about a lie,
then I'm telling the truth.

In the marsh-catch miles from here,
a magnet hole of words,
of sight from back home,
the milky leg from a blanket.

Unintentional send-off,
goodbye note written in invisible ink--
if I whisper the truth so no one hears,
then it is a lie.

Image #3