after the photograph by Pompo Bresciani
 
 

Lay me down in stone, with a few cigars,

peanuts. I am learning to sleep with bottles
of Bacardi Rum, loose change, purple beads

left in a tangle of grass. Lay me down

beneath razor-wire and cement blocks,
cigarettes smeared with lipstick. The sky

and its gold doubloon. Here, winter rain drifts
through jawbone, a blue vase filled

with artificial tulips, rosary beads, a note folded
and folded. Lay me down

next to the children and the faces in small
lockets and crosses, damp weeds that shred

and land. Break me open into the skein

of engine backfires that toss the air, the gunshot-
fractured haze. Carve my name in cement,

in the shadow of an iron bench, the magnolia

dusk. Lay me down in bed frames,
wooden headstones, planter boxes.

The sidewalk bursting with grass.