Detail from the Patron Saint Llorona Holding the 12,000 Year Clock-figure 2b

Naco was so beautiful at dusk last night....a little diamond choker beneath one enormous chinchilla collar made of cold steam. Worthy of a Saks Fifth Avenue insert yet all I keep thinking of are the particles the mammoth left behind, the hide and tusk cells still in the air. This mammoth has been after me since I was a child. Out near the old tailings pond, opposite the El Rancho murals and coin op horses...was she there on that broad Savannah, did she run up the old canyon chasing her child before falling under a hail of Clovis projectiles? Certain of finishing my mother's last thoughts as I sat on the front seat in the old Chevy in '72 and she pointed and said, "out there!" What if all those Border Patrol agents just started digging? We'd have a trench instead of a wall and rains like this would form a moat. How big is this castle after all? This. This is how Allah tells time. This is the over-and- over buried in the once-again.

Cupid

However exhausting the ex lovers
that punctuate the lines
may be, there is one thing
for certain, it better not be me.
Time, for what it is worth,
doesn't wait. Even for itself.
I see that one everyday
hidden in the fender of an old car,
standing atop a bowl of lemons
crouching in the store window.
Nothing more than reflections,
little lights, darks and assumptions:
this must be a car, that must be
the 12th of May.
It used to be the sale of a soul
measured the length of our kisses.
Now it's the time between
Xarelto and Entresto,
named by the Gods themselves.
This is the ejection fraction,
here is insufficient data,
the disclaimer contains words
like 'hope' 'will' 'as soon as possible'.
Remember: it is a disclaimer.
After all is said and done,
after all the photos have been strewn,
the typos corrected,
our belongings divided between
the thrift store and museum,
the vacuum of our latitudes,
and longitudes, these solar polar
bang bangs shift into high gear
and since it is all towards
the famous improvement
of our generation,
you know, the one that escapes
the fate of the Anasazi, escapes
La Brea, escapes the dreaming-
of-a-steak Las Caux pictograms,

Since it is that.

Dearest Darling, Happy Valentine's Day.
The heart is a pump.
The soul is an occupying army.
These winds might blow it up
towards Jupiter.
I hear it looks like paisley
and the rain lasts longer than the year..