Apology for Albuquerque
At dusk the mountains a tincture of tomato & coffee. Glinting jets were slowly magnetized above. I tell you: I was never so lonely. Military helicopters shook the condensation under my micro- waved quesadillas as the bees veritably dry-humped the rosemary bush. To a drunk man on Central I was a “piece of shit white-trash lord”—& maybe he was right: maybe I cried in my roasted swan, swatted the full chalice of mead on the coffee table. I screamed at my only friend in Taco Bell’s drive-thru. Should you know this? I see you as the cat, its eyes heavy with suspicion or sleep, as I’d jump from sleep, gasping. If cities are desire, I let a city define me: City of Respiring in a Paper Bag. Nonsensical City of musty beer hangovers & the sun’s daft brightness, Lonely but Beautiful City with cross-hatched jet exhaust, pink & orange in the waning hours against the sky’s interminable blue. This is not about the self but rather its near-erasure: let self-mutilation mean not hara-kiri so much as autopsy: peeling back the dermis (pinned to the table), sawing then prying the sternum to view the pulsing innards, finding there is nothing of intelligence, no lecture to learn but the city’s unrelenting mind, links of cars in nacreous soot on the distant freeway, each refracting its small version of the sun—an inertia of living opposed to the persistent desire for destruction. The dove beat its wings as the cat sunk in its jaws, harder.