against the fence. While they talk, she slips a foot

in and out of a new white pump, fingers the weave

of her French braid, the glittering earrings.

They could be a couple on their first date, she,

a little shy, he, trying to impress her

with his casual stance. This is the moment

when she learns what she will love: a warm night,

the feel of nylon between her thighs, the fine hairs

on her arms lifting when a breeze

sifts in through the bleachers, cars

igniting their engines, a man bending over her,

smelling the flowers pressed against her neck.

The Aqueduct

We played there on hot

L.A. summers, kids poking through

the slick algae and bloated

tires, the delicate rafts

of mosquito eggs. Open boxcars

pulled gray squares of sky overhead

as we took apples and crackers

from our pockets and ate, watched

the cursing workers from the can factory

gathering at the silver lunch truck

on the opposite ridge. Sometimes

their dark hands held out

triangles of sandwiches, black bottles

of Coke. They called out to us,

waving us over as we hooted

and shoved a tire through the silt,

the slippery silver pools.

We’d put on a show, daring

slides and jumps, crazy

somersaults down the ungiving

cement sides. Other times

we just sat quiet, eating

together, the sulfur heat rising

so their distant faces

wavered as if under water, as ours,

smaller and dimmer, must have

rippled back — the men and women,

their hammered muscles

swelling the seams of blue uniforms,

us skinny kids in our shorts — them,

filled with something like longing,

and us burning with impatience.

Graffiti

Near the Dayton Avenue signal tower,

below the tracks of the Southern P,

skittish brown birds build nests

in what’s left of the trees, repeating

their one stunned note, repeating

their small dun selves.

Near the white lime piles

where factories bury their trash,

boys lug grocery sacks of spray cans

to the wall already crazy with pictures

and painted words: COCK, CUNT, KILL,

so carefully and beautifully made,

and the large, elaborate names: Skeet.

Damon. Jojo. Cray. From here

they can feel the train grind by,

pulling its row of open boxcars, the blank sky

punched through each empty door. Here,

in blue jeans and bandannas, among

the discarded car seats, the shriveled

condoms and broken glass, they will scrawl

themselves into infinity. One boy

picks up a can of red paint, sprays over

Jojo’s name. It glides on effortlessly.

Three smooth strokes and he’s gone.

Twelve

Deep in the canyon, under the red branches

of a manzanita, we turned the pages

slowly, seriously, as if it were a holy text,

just as the summer before we had turned

the dark undersides of rocks to interrupt

the lives of ants, or a black stinkbug

and her hard-backed brood.

And because the boys always came,

even though they weren’t invited, we never

said anything, except Brenda who whispered