got written up last spring
for slaughtering a goat
in their driveway
and roasting it in a garbage can
filed with burning banana leaves.
Charlie says that's all nice n ethnic n all
but it stinks. Charlie usually smiles
much more than is necessary, but he isn't smiling
when he says this. He's nervous; he knows
at night city backyards become the domain
of cats and thieves. Our plots have flimsy borders
and strange artifacts decompose for dark miles down into
the crowded earth.
The other morning it seemed
someone climbed flfteen feet of the clothesline pole
before it fell. Some crabgrass and a few Califomia poppies
were crushed into a man-sized fetal curl.
Me, I've only been here since mid-January
and already I've a small pile of bones gathered
under the lemon tree, my own things
to bury and burn.
The little lot
is just beginning to bloom.
and sent it to the post office who sent it to the college
scholarship
service who sent it to the post office who sent it to me
so I could sign it
and send it to the post office who sent it to the college
scholarship
service who sent it to the post office who sent it to the
financial aid
office who sent it to the post office who sent it to me
so I could sign it again and I
sent it to the post offce who sent it to the bank who sent it
to the post
office who sent it to the guarantee agency who sent it to the
post office
who sent it to the bank who sent it to the post office who
sent it to the
financial aid office
where it was approved
for half the amount i needed five months after I needed it
in the form of a check representing (apparently)(money)
representing silver in the treasury in washington
which doesn't exist
which I picked up at the financial aid office
(trying my best to hasten the process)
which I carried to the bank
(trying my best to hasten the process)
and deposited in the machine which notified many other
machines
that I had (apparently)(money) representing silver in the
treasury in
washington which doesn't exist
which I asked the machine to transfer from my savings
account which
had nothing in it to my checking account which had
nothing in it off which I wrote a check representing
(apparently)(money) representing silver in the treasury in
washington
which doesn't exist
which I sent to the post office who sent it to the accounting
office
next
door
to the financial aid office
all
so
I could sit in a room
filled with poetry.