& light seizes our wretched bodies. I’m watching clichés

dance across Mother’s face, & Father must know

of this marriage: lips spring whiskey-red

from plastic heartland. Wind rakes

through my threadbare body. No camera could divulge this:

a corn-silk glimmer of sea through the window’s jaws.

Pacific yawns open & open,

snaggle-toothed, before the projector flatlines

in a firework of black. Mother crouches by the carcass

of light, examines its sun-flecked abortion. There are no murders

in the South. & we dance: spread-eagled,

Godlike creatures. I’m amputating the Peninsula:

the pickpocketed wind deposits fistfuls of seeds

in our barren ribcages. Houses collapse sideways, drunk.

Later, the aurora hugs our lips. I conjure shadow-men

for the quiet guillotine of the ceiling-fan.