go out. From the recent restaurant

boom, infer a citywide uptick in rage-ravaged homes.

People want new spots to fight, to squall

and snipe, lose their appetites, be brought

the chalkboard special, not touch it,

see it whisked to the kitchen and scraped

out back for a dog to eat, but that’s cool—dogs

have to eat, too—

California

California

We often ate late by flameless

candles and took turns choosing

how best to be disposed of.

I want to be buried. I want everyone

to be buried. I realize there’s scarcely

a spare acre left in the ground, but I just

can’t do without the indecorous

transit from parlor to plot.

I need the array of daytime headlights

jolting the arid access road,

the only remembrance that matters.

Don’t make a speech.

For years I would wonder whether

the man who attacked me—

in his memory, did the event of it

persist as a dull sort of flash? Then

he died and became himself

just a flash in the mind of the world.

Now I wonder—is he anywhere?

I don’t believe in Hell and also I don’t

believe in nothing, so that leaves only

Heaven. I have a couple

questions. It is my understanding

that the weather in Heaven

has only a single setting,

which is PLEASANT. I haven’t

spent real time in California, but friends

of mine who’ve moved there

say it’s challenging, absent the changing

of the seasons, to remember when things

took place. With reference to always

the lodgepole pine and the low-bent

needlegrass, you get confused.

Dates and sequences, even the people

involved. You can almost imagine

the whole thing was somebody else.

A Space to Train and Exit

A Space to Train and Exit

Maybe California’s just plain easier,

with the commonness

of outbuildings. Raw-looking cedar or sheet

metal walls and a runnel

of sun getting in through the roof seams.

Position the heavy bag, tighten the eyebolt,

twenty-five right hooks. Or pull up

a chair and compose your suicide note.

A space to train and exit.

The purpose of having a body at all

is to practice, to practice

the keeping alive of domestic

animals and plants. You dispense to yourself

some minerals and water. You expose

yourself to the sun and it helps

you remember to do the same for those

in your charge. If you could equip

them with all they require, or make them

require nothing, you wouldn’t

need your body at all.

Magpie

Magpie

Unusual rain of late, and a new weed

that resembles concertina wire

is threading itself through the dirt.

Seeing it makes me think of never seeing it again,

how I will miss this upstart greenness

after I lose it all and am thrown

from this home, which will be soon.

It’ll be someone else living here then, hiding

an emergency key in a bucket,

up late snaking the bath drain or early