A man driving to a field
Where his favorite parking lot
Used to be






New lovers like geese stranded
On a freeway overpass
So content and irredeemably lost






A thick rainbow stretching
To the ground as if
Being squeezed from the small
Intestine of the cumulonimbus
Above the Sunnyside Package
And Discount Cig






374, 000 automobiles each day
Traversing Interstate 405 between
Los Angeles and Santa Ana
Each cradling lives that will never
Be yours






Searching for the beautiful
Illusion of the self in the space
Between the rain and other rain






Entering love with the flabbergast
Of a castaway newly acquainted
With the cruise ship’s deck






The heat wave mattered
For a time we are connected
By more than our toilet pipes






The promise of marriage like that of
An oil truck rattling the porches
Down Orchard St.
To let you not freeze to death






Railroad tracks destined never to touch
Trembling beneath the rushing
Inevitability they propel






Moving from loves like a pebble
Tumbling from the glacier’s interior
Into the North Pacific
From one asphyxiation to the next






Highway’s glittered strip a reminder
That the earth still does exist
It’s been right here beneath us
All along






Lazy roll of the Apalachicola and Yangtze
Constant rhythms with which we are whipped
Around the sun
The relative vastness of local continents
In such ways are we reminded of our
Own immobility






The particular beauty of jellyfish
A longing to know what’s inside






The aspiration of the lover
That of one eating an artichoke
To consume fully the heart






Felled power lines sparking the night
Groping for one another
Clumsy across the void