THE MAD GIRL'S LIFE SEEMS
A LOST RADIO STATION

crackling, fading out.
Pinon smoke blows her
hair towards Taos,
yellow light turns
her lips carnelian.
She lugs a denim 
bag of cat's
claws, glass eyes
of two dead men,
stiff bristles of
verbs. Hypodermics
track her arms like
mice droppings in
protein powder as
gipsies whose
faces blur shake
balalaikas 

THE MAD GIRL TRIES
TO REMEMBER THOSE ROOMS

mold kept blossoming
in, the turQuoise and
chocolate rooms of white
dried flowers, a too
hard couch and the
rug on the floor, the
man with rust hair. She
stumbled thru wind
blown pines within
Carson City as doors
were blown closed for
days and men and dogs
were sucked from cliffs.
She can't remember 
how far the grass went
or when tumble weed
turned plum and
uprooted itself like
a woman who couldn't 
stay where she was
pinned like those posters
in plum and guava
over the succulents
smuggled past San Diego
into Tucson that started
to fade and dissolve too

THE MAD GIRL CAN'T LOOK
CLOSE AND IN THE DISTANCE

She never liked
to look at what
was near, preferred
things blurring
in fog, branches so
far away they looked
like something they
couldn't be. She
couldn't look at
what was, as if 
she'd always find
it wanting, like
skin magnified so a
dot seems a gulch
in San Pedro a 
whole bus dis-
appears in

THE MAD GIRL NEEDS
A DAY TO SPREAD OUT WITHOUT
BORDERS OR BOUNDARIES
OR PHONES

like a very fat woman
pulling out of a rubber
Playtex girdle she can't
believe hasn't dissolved,
fallen apart as so much
in her last Julys have.
She needs a day like a
beach with no prints on it
to feel something could
go on with no trapdoors,
no Oldsmobile slashing
toward her where in dreams
the tendons in her lungs
crush, smear her heart
with metal. Only the
stillness holds her
like air or arms that
could reach her in time