Poem
3.
and so the universe ends split open on black sand beaches
bare toes submerged as the tide rolls backwards from
forever; in youth and in sunset, we create convergence that age
no longer holds captive, and you are the closest thing to baptism
since i realized god wasn’t hiding behind the old church sign.
we chase oysters along the coastline complaining that the
pearls we find don’t compare to the supernova overhead;
i’ll call this moment a cliché and you’ll say who cares about
literary tropes at the end of the world and i’ll disagree
i read a book in fourth grade just like this but i don’t remember
the name and don’t want to because the author is
standing next to me; crying softly into the cuts in my palm
2.
on the seventh day my ribs fell out one by one and
my lungs did two hundred and twenty down the I-5
dead grass and amber hills; dead grass and amber hills
i hang up on my surgeon just as the anesthesia kicks in
trying to remember the scientific term for blood loss
my brain in the passenger seat rolls down the window
dead grass and amber hills; dead grass and amber hills
it asks what the point of doctors is if
you’re sick someplace only your bones know and
i mock the irony obeying no law but gravity
my skepticism slams the breaks halfway to Santa Rosa
and i wonder if the last view roadkill sees is
dead grass and amber hills; dead grass and amber hills
1.
we find domesticity squatting on faded carpets, kneeling
before tv evangelists preaching sermons through static. nostalgia
cuts sidelength down my abdomen, so you are flawless in memory,
motion picture and technicolor spectacle rendered artless in envy. i
tell you as much as the credits roll, and you confess you hadn’t been watching;
you’ve no spare eyes for fiction when reality is curled tranquil at your side.
we age gently in the sickly light of lampshades, bent
backwards like blown glasswork over the armchairs
laughing, like we still had days left to spend and
homes to find in hellscapes.