I
In this foreign city
the phone is louder than ever.

It stretches across the dark,
startles my sleep.

I grow weary as I listen, 
too much meaning for one night. 

Pain says: I’ll be in touch.

I’ve swallowed the bird whose cries
flapped open my dreams

now there’s just a beating in my chest 
and Los Angeles curves off the map,

a tattered thing.  She hangs brightly
out of reach, my lost allegiance.

(no, that is not what I mean)

What I mean is the sky hurts my eyes,
sometimes I don’t look up for days.

A figure on the bed speaks a different language,   
distills meaning through the hands.

 

II
Your voice is floating in the pacific,
near the edge of the Topanga shore. 

It drifts by my open window, laughing. 
Tomorrow a bird will swoop down and eat you. 

Darling, the sea is yours.
Its darkness mingles with your blood,

traces the outside of your veins
until everything is salt and brine,

a wave travels far toward its death,
folding inward.

 

III
They are tearing down the building
at the corner of Reseda and Prairie

where we held raw fruit in our hands
and spoke of the future. 

This morning I look north, away from you, 
to a city in which you are not,

a city in which we are annihilated,
a city in which I release you.

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