Holding one’s breath competitively
is a violent pasttime.
But the peppers, the smooth
fruits—lips slide
over all that. The medicinal
pollution of the body.

California, it seems,
is ungovernable. Its festival of
prisoners. Old flashbulbs. Always-cold
ocean. Every story is a slave
narrative. An escape or implosion.
I haven’t dyed my hair in

some time. Here, too, is complicated.
Pigeons and coffee—rarely tea. And I don’t
know what the birds are
like over there.

Big & rainbowed, maybe.