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Aneita Jean never liked the men at the Klan rallies. It scared her not to see their faces. It made her uncomfortable that they all seemed to know her daddy, and that he knew them by their raspy voices. She would watch them circling around on the hill, their crosses aflame, and snuggle closer to her father’s chest.

“I want to leave, daddy,” she’d say softly, fearful they might overhear and come running back, robes flapping behind like hateful phantoms.

“Hush up, Jeannie.”

My ex answers your call like shit is sweet, says, Good to hear from you, so fake you want to reach through the receiver. Next thing, she drops the phone minus nary a pardon and leaves you on an indefinite hold soundtracked by the blare of some rap video cranked beyond good sense. Meanwhile, you carry the noisy cordless into another room, crack the blinds, and watch a pair of baseheads, both thin as antennas, push a half-wrecked sedan down the street. The baseheads, they’ve got the sedan’s doors flung open, and seethe at each other across a scrappy ragtop roof. Farther, they jog their hooptie to a slow cruise, jump in on the run, and sputter off. It’s still plenty of lightweight action on the set. The old lady dressed in a who-gives-a-what-about-the-heat getup (down coat, snow boots, thick wool scarf) tugging a shopping cart full of thrashed cans. Down a ways, boys riding wheelies for distance on dirt bikes with mismatched rims.

Prendergast painted the Public Garden;

remembered, even at a little distance,

the city takes on his ravishing tones.

Jots of color resolve: massed parasols

above a glimmering pond, the transit

of almost translucent swans. Brilliant bits

- jewels? slices of sugared fruit? – bloom

into a clutch of skirts on the bridge

above the summer boaters. His city’s essence:

all the hues of chintzes or makeup

or Italian ices, all the sheen artifice

is capable of. Our city’s lavish paintbox.

There was an old buzka on Luther Street known as the Cat Woman, not because she kept cats but because she disposed of the neighborhood’s excess kittens. Fathers would bring them in cardboard boxes at night after the children were asleep and she would drown them in her wash machine. The wash machine was in the basement, an ancient model with a galvanized-metal tub that stood on legs and had a wringer. A thick cord connected it to a socket that hung from the ceiling and when she turned it on the light bulb in the basement would flicker and water begin to pour.

Coyotes invade. They claim to be the truth.

Black bears nose the bougainvillea, moving

eastward, indiscriminate, original.

Our sinks back up, our toilets will not drain,

our nature disobediently tends toward nature.

We unyoke owl pellets from marrow

in desert meadow. His mouth a pigeon eye,

a torch, a womb turned flower. He, still a boy

dug from cactus skull, undresses into bark

beetles. He unlearns how to hold a gist

with my hand.