Stoked back-throat cinders
supply sizzling slicks of foam—
spasmodic,
near-dry retroperistalsis.
Mother's gift! Cortisol for breakfast.
Then comes the rest of the routine:
remove the clothes,
wash the body; skin cinnamon
red with blistering
steam; redress; lecture;
down a long
hot drink of
chamomile tea.

You and I in the garden,
library of bookfoam on
lattice shelves, Dewey Decimal
inflorescence, logic trees on panicles,
delicate pedicel theorems.
You, juvenile, virtue hidden
in fleshy sepals, tantalizingly
callow calyx, milkweed-
suckling, chub-cheeked
and pointlessly adorable.
You, morbidity long floresced
in budding blunder,
baby feet feeling out
fledgling leylines to the mortuary—
which disorder killed your mother?
No matter.
You, lonely dividend,
left first to lawman daddy
and lost, finally, to me.
All this time for thinking, decaying,
the two of us consumptive, cadaverous,
phosphorus-starved and stunted,
fungally necrotic and
****** beyond repair.

The garden path
of your mind is lined in blue,
lovely vinca, probably
because you're a sad sack.
(Don't deny it—I'd be, too,
if my mother died like that.)
My side grows fireweed, fire sticks,
scarlet bee balm, yucca,
San Diego sunflower,
Compact Fire Red.
Ash for fertilizer.
I had a sister, not a mother,
and she burned to death,
and every morning I am burning

to death with her.

digital bedroom,
juvenile secrets whispered
'neath LCD sheets

the skin of your fingers
are her fingers;
the tongue's apex
a xerox of her own tongue;
she dappled your cheek's curvature with vulpecula
and you appreciate, despite yourself,
this loving sense of detail.
forgive a master sculptor if she feels
entitled to a private moment with her own
aphrodite of knidos.

Soft nacred wall of wool,
prismatic in newborn sunrise
—a pillow over the maws of godlings.
Their wet black arms yawn skyward
while they drown in their bed of brack.

Sawtooth skeins
of water candombe in
achroma, winds at
two-five, the water that
hits the roof el contestador
and the water that hits the water
la tumba. The procession leaves limpid
stipples on ***** plex and
renders finches pointilistic;
the peeling periwinkle deckwood
has the dewey quality
of a runway model,
glossed with the bay's blue sploshing.
Beyond this, deeper in the gray:
mountain striates
in harsh gradient,
spring to myrtle to a blueish-reseda,
redwood peak nodes
anchors for erratic heartlines.
The drumbeat pulses these lines
at their mist-vaguened edges
and moves all.
It's a flash, fifteen minutes of
California rain.

The moon’s a silver racehorse:
Quicker than the crier god,
And more clever on his feet.
From his horseshoes, I cleaved
Little spoons, to stir in sweets,
And set them near a lonely cup,
Dips bound by milk and honey.

Bedspread flung in crooked bents,
Drink steeped on the windowsill,
I laid his body beneath
Glass sheets, and heard—like hoofbeats—  
thudding stars, rushing along the east,
Setting bets on who will win:
The sun, or me, or sleep.