Fire Company

Fire Company

The creosote caught

as if kerosene-soaked.

Up went the brittlebush,

the mesquite quick as

kettle steam. God-gone

the ironwood while cattle

ranchers stood rapping

their wedding rings

on the white rail.

Holy shit, holy shit!

they sing

to the angelic jet

spreading its red

retardant around

the housing tract

like a loved one’s

ashes. Dust and

lightning, gold

smoke scrolling

like a calendar

into the sky

until the sky

is choked

with time, with years,

which torch-touched

under the bursage

burn for days,

catch flight as if

no flesh had

ever lived them.

Sewol

No news             now                         no shift in cargo

            to capsize             what the captain left

before the kids                        kids             he said            

            head back to your rooms             to text            

from inside a stone                        I love you—

            we waited for you for days             by the shore

we hold up signs            backlit by candles           

            return to us our friends                        we wrote

return to us                        this paper boat            released

            with a message                        we love you—

divers saw                         three bodies floating

            through the window             of a passenger cabin

but were unable             to retrieve them

Book of Desserts

pages for the privileged 

sugared stacks of white

on white, the cane

ground down into paper

lives follow the curve of that glass case

counter, inflection, chocolate cake, 

shelf to the cooling machine, plastic front,

marble floor

petits fours and doberge, apple stack and fritter

layer, layer, layer

You cut into this cake like colonists did Africa,

with joy

the sinking tines of a fork in frosting

the downward drive of a stake in soil

yield pleasure 

I imagine

the lagniappe after need has been negotiated

my mother observed

the refusal of a homemade brownie,

a slant eye at key lime

does nothing to further trust

this is the tyranny of the mille-feuille, 

in exile become Napoleon

subject of history 

and emperor still hungry

Creative Nonfiction

The materials are the artifacts

and the art of fact,

the matter of truth

and the truth of matter.

It plays the language

within (or is it against?)

the memory of the event

or the event of memory,

the way the little cushion

still cups like two open hands

in the stern of the boat

where years ago he laid

his drowsy head.

It speaks the no to fiction

and the fiction of no,

the way we all make
believe our renunciations.

Towns

I’ve seen children baptized by force

roped and dragged down
to the water's edge
and across to the other side.

Some exit this life in a similar way

each door frame
the place they have turned their backs.

No one can step in the same river twice

Soul says the twisted body Open

a rim bone
a market

a mecca

a page

The world is high places and low places

seascapes

tabernacles

childhood chants

skulls in the grasp of great tree roots

smoke on the mountain

steam from skin.

Wisdom says go back another way

I’ve seen rivers change course, shocked.

The Tilting

The windows become the floor             the door the ceiling—           

            in life jackets                 we rise to the top

like a hatch now             we climb through it—            

            waddle down the wall                         of the hallway

toward             what light remains : the water                         ever

            our only light                         only hope by the stairs

cascading—             how many times have we tilted                       

            from our most fervent                         intentions?