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| Migration
On the rocky grade, light wept. Its terrain should have lured you. I wore yellow shoes and tripped. In a sill, rain gathered. A palm, towering face, grazed the hotel wall. Through sleep, I was pitched into the canyon, taken from bed by words strung together, and then tossed from the fifth floor. When I crashed, crabs hid in slits between rocks and saw me, brained. Recoil. Scoop up the postcards, yank back what you’ve heard. What’s there to pack for the ride home? Invisible nicks (and concealer for eye-circles). Cormorants, straight shot, point north and you turn east for the quick, inland route. I don’t ask — it’s crazy — to stay on the coast, black birds flapping alongside and telling the truth about where we’re headed: a thin pass where the road’s tin rail keeps us upright. Birthed into sunshine, warmth on her head’s crown. The sun slides down and she doesn’t miss it. A man boards an airplane and mist descends. Mist turns to fog and she’s sure he’ll return: someone down there wants him to come back. California is for the easily fooled. He squints and loses sight of her. He mistakes what’s below for a wasteland: uneven heights, desolate. Dusk traffic lights thicken, form poison through the basin’s veins. Her heaven is a drought. Stucco house in a pocket of smog, tough calla lilies, smoke of a city fire rising. Love drifts west, forgets, blackens. She drives to follow it. And swallows, a fountain of Philomela’s words, emerge from a viaduct.
Bio Note
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