The Years Dad Blamed the Breeze

Some nights I imagine Dad as the lift in a shoe or wing of a plane—
his wisdom packed with imaginary insight:   
all shadows have eyes,he'd say, stoking the embers hoping 
to bring back life andAmber the year Amber 
flew our coop to join a coup; the year mom split
with the televangelist—
Dad, always blaming the breeze saying,they'd never leave us.
Some nights I find him alone, outside— forefinger pressed to the air.
Some nights I find him alone, outside— wound so tight he's ripping. 

We Are Not Hot We Are Melting

On Wilshire our Cadillac is carjacked 
at high noon stranded inside a city that eats Cadillacs & stars 
& traffic is not slow & we are not hot we are melting 
so we search for our brother who is missing & lost 
& not here in this fine 
Beverly Hills median strip of grass the color of expensive glass 
& I think I hear his favorite Sir Mix-A-Lot song sung
from the shitty t-shirt section of a bodega 
on Crenshaw where Michelle & I work the streets 
for more than money b/c (apparently)
we were absent the day God delivered good daddys 
& instead we make money by the minute 
turning men into $  cracking mirrors for luck
though I have not come here to tell you this 
we came for more $ & escape & to find 
Glenn & instead find a botched robbery behind 
Grauman's where we watch this dying guy take his dying 
gasp on Hollywood n Vine we finally found Paul Reuben's star.

Sometimes I write about yard plants instead

I've always wanted to use the word bougainvillea
in a poem but could never locate your garden.
I've always thought my past boyfriends
as wrong & brilliant at the same time—
like a diamond on a knuckle of a severed fist.
I've always thought if anyone finds themselves in one of my poems
most likely they will die in it. 
Once, Uncle Brandy & I traveled backwards down a dirt hill
in an unhinged tilt-a-whirl cage, yet we did not flip.
Sometimes I ponder what Lovell said in my NA meetings—
crack should be called broke because we're all broke.
Sometimes I wish someone else had died instead of you.
Sometimes I feel it snowing in Maryland even 
when I am applying lotion in Florida.
Sometimes I write about you.
Sometimes I write about yard plants instead.
I've often thought if I could meet anyone in the world I'd want to remeet you.