November 9, 2016

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Into the night and into the streets

of the universe I walk with my little

blue heart. I rise my hands

to the fractured light

like the girl I was, aching for safety

and rehearsing my freedom

in the garden under my father’s

sky. I got close to whiteness

by loving my uncle: him and mercy me

shooting guns in the foothills

while the great spirit cloistered itself

in the dying oaks of the earlier

century. Now the air turns.

The moonlight eats us happily

and we’re happy for it.

Little hummingbird ghosts gather

in a field far from here plotting

their revenge. My uncle grows older

and closer to death in a trailer park

in the Central Valley. I grow a skin

beyond my skin, rage swelling me

beyond the perimeter of my known self.