cop shoots four year-old girl, runs

in ragged back yards at the end of summer,
overgrown lawns and last year’s leaves,
these dreams of you that fill my mouth with ashes

the sunlight a deathbed gift from de Chirico

the marigolds and their shadows

tell the child you love him
but he grows up to run away

tell the drowning man that
an ocean of blood is still an ocean

nothing here but degrees of desperation

mothers yelling in foreign languages

do you see that these poems
are for me and not you?

will you crawl for your lover
in spite of the pain?

no shame in lying if it
keeps the house from burning down