Watch it he says. I’m pushing the egg, subtly at first, but now
        that he’s said something, hard with the fork, launching
        a reckless wobble. I ask Is it selfless or selfish to kamikaze,

to hijack a 757 on its way to LA? What’s the difference? Honor
        he says believing one’s country is right. Right? The egg’s close
        to the edge, and I’m tempted to smash it with my fist,

stop its uneasy scuttle. This is our kitchen, our counter, our dinner
        half-prepped, our tv ringing in the other room. But I feel
        as if I were spinning inside that egg. I don’t know, can only

imagine inside that shell, that plane, that pilot. Honor: protect and
        serve? a shiny metal badge? the sheriff’s heavy holster?
        I heat the skillet, the oil thins. Somewhere a child chooses

to load a gun, somewhere he doesn’t have a choice. This egg can’t ever
        be a chicken no matter how long I leave it in the fridge
        or cradle it between my feet on the couch. You’re wrong

he says. And you’re in trouble if you can’t see the difference. He’s right—
        I can’t separate the two. And he can’t hear me, won’t imagine
        the woman who straps the bomb-purse beneath her Salwar

might believe her life a sacrifice, this death honorable.

i

The wild ride’s begun, the dogs let loose at dusk, and we’ve wrapped ourselves
        in a rare lineage of ancient fur.
Cold with the black breath of the hunt and the unintelligible whispering
        of wind in the pines, the night air swirls
falling snow, drifts it into mounds at each of the horses’ legs. In the distance,
        a howling and the scurry of bones.
And like the cells of an extinct plant multiplied in labs, raging, we too close in on
        the weak, as if a strain of sickness.
How on earth did I get transported here, we wonder, the speech of childhood
        holding palm open its pure hand. I reach
into the company of strangers, hear a fire ignite the skin. And a landscape
        untravelled, like words that go missing,
begins its long, slow descent from the bliss of nakedness to the hollow shame
        of injury. Under shadows of mountains, a distance
nears beautifully lit by stars. Never to be a billboard of artificial trees, never
        to uncover a trail of frozen, emtombed explorers
whose bodies slipped carefully under ice, we say everyday is colder, less
        thought out, inherited—as if we knew
what that word meant, as if the blind were born to line up neatly on streetcorners
        to listen and negotiate with noise.
And ladders are propped up next to others against the infinite wall, rungless,
        each voice a balloon floating sleepily
over crowds. When do we halt and beg for mercy? When do we steal back
        what was rightfully ours, what gestures
at the edges of our lives, tugs almost at our coats, that says you’d have to be
        a snob not to listen to fairytales.

ii

If only I was there and could have predicted the day the angels arrived, which
        random entwining of native trees
tribes had secretly arranged, pointing their twisted arms, so they could find
        the way home. Each day is a blessing,
an oarless boat slipping into water under endless puffy clouds. You, who left
        the rope untied, who would have wept
to see the many-colored painted men unravel again from the bargained trees
        to aim their poisoned spears at you,
perhaps the strange inconclusive events of this world will throw you at long last
        into the jaws of history. For once, we’ve paid
attention. We now know those we fail to recognize for who they are or what
        we’ve done to them will harm us,
will spread over our future like a virus long thought extinct. Achilles’ heals,
        our combined wisdom, forever exposable.

iii

It should have held fast: after all, we’d applied lots of glue and
        punched holes in the lining.
We’d moved all our belongings, even our good clothes, into
        the larger room where, sleeping on floors,
we dreamed of losing our limbs in forests dense with animals.
        Voices came to us, too. Voices that chilled
our bones, as if they had returned through a narrow slot in the canyon
        no one believed could bring forth life.
It was like squeezing water through rocks. And we didn’t think once
        of raw diamonds or the many other jewels
available to us, though we also knew where they hid. We thought
        the barren salt flats stretched out before us,
beckoning to us, with their mouths. We shipped each other
        crates of cured food and portable lanterns.
Could there ever be enough rope? Each other’s bodies
        we kissed and licked, nightly, knowing
the skin was a cancer, a bottle of gasoline we stuffed with rags, a map
        whose surface longed to be punctured
until it resembled a constellation of hurt. Again, we were like actors,
        cocky and spent, who remembered
each new day life formed lists of possibilities to be unstringed
        from the ball. O, we swear we knew things,
didn’t all of us know things? Little wings to lift spirits from the merciless
        unending feast our forefathers slew
and laid dripping at our feet. And maybe, Brothers, for that, for that
        we are to blame. Maybe these days are indeed
our final ones and we, good sons and daughters that we are, should
        inherit the fresh drip of warm blood
and the dust of buildings in out throats. After all, we too had descended
        from terrible crimes of obedience.

iv

I was thinking it was like waking up to a blanket of snow, these cardboard
        nights with the beetles and frogs,
but there was literally no snow, of course, there was only this floating
        like a white smoke among the chairs,
a dream of candles lit on the large round table amid chipped glasses
        of wine and bourbon. The wind carried
a small voice in our ears like a promise of bees, a dark that twists itself
        between the visible network of limbs
hung over us. The impossibly-reached but never sought after song—a miracle—
        who in the past must have been glad
to have at least reached for it—no longer alone in their fingering toward light
        that was also like limbs: connected,
happy there are seasons of surrender and renewal cloaked in silence.
        No guessing and too much guessing:
each of us a small thing, somewhat discoverable—where we is a sudden
        untouchable darkness between stars.

Restaurant Dave didn’t even bring his board. With empty hands, he walked south along Encinitas Boulevard in his work clothes. The polished wing tips pinched at his feet. His creased pant-legs dangled just a little too high above his ankles. A week earlier, Dave’s van had broken down. It wasn’t worth walking all the way home to change.

Every break from L.A. to Mexico was blown-out. Swamis’ point could handle almost any size, but the combination of wind and current made it unsurfable.

In the Swamis’ parking lot, The Caveman drank beer with Weasel. The two of them turned away from the railing as Dave walked up in his waiter clothes. Whitecaps formed on the windblown Pacific all the way to the horizon.

“Hey,” Caveman said, “you getting married or something? I thought you had to work.” He lifted the collar of Dave’s tuxedo shirt.

“I thought I did too. They sent me home. Manager said it was slow. Can you believe that? My night off and look at the surf.” The manager of Cilantro’s was twenty-five. There were stupid red streaks in her hair and a silly tattoo on her lower back. She decided that he would go home without making any money tonight. Restaurant Dave had been in this business for twenty years.

For almost twenty years I lived in Missoula, Montana, but now I own a house in Lubbock, Texas, and four little girls are doing cheers in my living room. It’s early spring, almost dark, the grackles shrieking in the tree next door, and Destiny and Amarris and Marcia (which is not pronounced “Marsha” but “Marsea-ah,” like the ocean) and a fourth girl who is someone’s cousin, with her hair in two tight French braids and eyebrows like Frieda Kahlo, are chanting “yellow banana…” and stepping side to side. The cousin is about seven, and Marcia, the youngest, is six and snaggle-toothed and tentative, looking at the other girls instead of at her clapping audience, me. Destiny and Amarris are sisters. Amarris, the older, is ten, already self-conscious as a teenager, with a strong face and a knock-off Ed Hardy hoodie that makes her look tough. Destiny, my favorite, is eight and a natural performer, with a permanent and genuinely happy smile and bobbed chin-length hair parted straight down the middle. She’s wearing her third pair of shoes of the day, shiny red ballet flats, after a pair of pink flip-flops with big rhinestone diamonds and a pair of white Grasshoppers with pink polka dots and a little pink bow.

“Want us to do another?” she asks, and I nod vigorously. My five-year-old son Scotty scrunches up his face and covers his eyes on the couch.

***

I bought my house in January, four months ago, for $12,421, cash. I paid for part of it with the retirement I cashed in before moving to Lubbock and the rest with a credit card advance. The house was a HUD foreclosure previously owned by a woman named Eloisa Quintera and occupied, prior to the foreclosure, by her brother-in-law and some other guys, who, Destiny told me, didn’t have children and always wore hats. The brother-in-law’s name, I know from opening his power bill, which he had not paid for several months, was Aaron Martinez. Before they left the house, they knocked large holes in the drywall of all four rooms and removed most of the light fixtures, the bathroom sink, and the stove and refrigerator. Or maybe these things were gone long before they moved out since the house, with or without these items, would have been only marginally livable. It’s unclear how much they did to trash the house and how trashed it was already.

On October 17, 2007, a Union Pacific employee called the Tooele Police Department and reported a vacated truck in the Salt Lake desert. The truck was parked next to the train tracks, and had been there since just before noon. The police asked for the license plate number. The truck was registered to Stephen Krommenhoek. He was 23 years old and lived in Salt Lake City. They sent an officer to check it out. When the officer arrived, he found the truck windows rolled down. There were two boxes of unused ammunition and an empty water bottle on the floor of the truck.

On the other side of the train tracks, fresh shells were sprinkled on the ground. An old office chair and some Bud Light bottles were set up in the distance as targets. Past those, over a small hill and closer to the water, there was a body lying on the salty ground. The call from Union Pacific came in around five and the officer found the body around seven. An ambulance was called; family was notified. The body was lifted up and hauled away.

—-

After Steve died, that was about all of the story I was able to tell, despite trying to eulogize him several times. Whether writing an essay or drinking with my friends, I was never able to get far into the story without turning back or shutting it down. I couldn’t handle the image of Steve lying there, face down in the salt, with the distant I-80 traffic zooming past him. Every time I tried to tell the story, I just wanted to put him back in his truck, and to bring him home.

Tamara, Steve’s girlfriend, responded to his death in the opposite way. She couldn’t not talk about it. In any context, to anyone. She couldn’t go a day without bringing Steve up. It didn’t stop her if her audience didn’t know Steve, nor would she pause for those who knew him well. In my case, she didn’t mind if I just listened without saying anything, and we started to spend a lot of time together—much more than we did when Steve was alive.

In some of Tamara’s versions she recounted what Steve must have done that day. Other times she blamed herself for being in San Diego when it happened. And sometimes she presented the story as a small blip of something much bigger—something as long as eternity. When Tamara talked about Steve’s death as part of the eternal scheme of things, she started by telling me that he prayed every night. That was something I didn’t know about him.

Tamara and Steve were both Mormon. So was I, to some extent. I grew up Mormon, at least. Sometimes Tamara took comfort in her religion. Other times she said that the pressures of being a righteous priesthood holder drove Steve to the pawn shop, and the inability of the church to find a place for nuance put the .357 Magnum in his hand.

Still, Tamara was occasionally able to calm herself down when thinking about two things: 1) that she’d be able to see Steve again after she died and 2) that at some point while reclining in the passenger seat of his truck before he walked off and shot himself, Steve was comforted, and felt some kind of peace in the Salt Lake desert before he left.

That was one reason why I couldn’t tell Steve’s story as freely or as well. When I imagined him leaning the seat of his truck back as far as it would go, I saw him staring at the brown metallic ceiling, and that was all.

(after Edwin Reyes)

Considering the lack of oversight,
the lack of tracks, considering
the shunned moon and the bitter
grit of stars, the bed’s gravelly silence
and the idling tinted-window
bass-thump SUV, the melting ticket
and the grim cyclops conductor,
it was pleasant to waken,  my son waving,
rattling the sports section in front of me
like a panicked sailor to read me some score,
the pages drifting apart and down
to the dusty floor of our tiny station.

When winter came I was out of work again. For two months I did nothing but drink and smoke and fall asleep in front of the television. I knew I should look for work before the money I’d saved over the summer ran out, and most mornings I flipped through the classifieds with my coffee. But I couldn’t concentrate on them, or if I did find a promising ad I couldn’t bring myself to walk through the cold. So when my brother called, early one Monday morning, waking me, I was already a month behind on the rent.

“Time to come out of the cave, George,” Brian said when I finally answered. “Hibernation’s over. I found you a job.”

I rolled onto my stomach and lay propped on my elbows, the phone pressed between my shoulder and cheek. The blinds covering my bedroom window were bright enough to make me squint. The mattress was on the floor, along with an empty bottle of Livingston, a juice glass with a circle of crusty wine at the bottom, a pile of newspapers, my work boots. It had been a month since I’d spoken to Brian, at Christmas, when I’d had too much champagne at his house and said something nasty to his sister-in-law. He was 27, three years younger than me, and filled with shame for the way I’d lived my life.

I picked up the glass and dug at the dried wine with my fingernail. “Your gutters clogged again?”

“Nothing like that,” Brian said. “Real work this time. A steady job. Steady pay. Not this half-ass seasonal shit you’ve been trying to get by on. George, it’s not working.”

I wanted to ask Brian what he thought he knew about real work. But he was right. I’d spent the summer and the first warm weeks of fall laying stone paths from front doors to driveways, from back doors to garages, across lawns I’d been hired to cut the summer before, and the summer before that. I’d always seemed to work for the same people, who all lived in the same house, a house with a deck, French doors, bay windows, a swimming pool. When I first came back to North Moreland I’d worked six months for a moving company, and these were the people I’d moved. Brian’s kind of people, and I was tired of them. Tired of hauling slabs of stone from the bed of someone else’s pickup, tired of looking for work every time the weather turned.

I scraped all the wine off the bottom of the glass and now my fingernail was darkened with red flecks of what looked like paint or wax. I touched the dried wine to my tongue. Tasteless. I spit it onto my pillow.

“You okay?” Brian asked.

I told him I was listening.

“Good. I met a guy in a bar on Saturday. Nice guy, friendly. He said something about needing good workers at this factory where he’s the foreman. I told him about you, and he wants you to stop in this morning. There’s bonus and some overtime. He said you can clear six hundred a week pretty easy if you’re diligent.”

“If I’m diligent,” I said.

The last time Brian had found me a job was the winter I’d been laid off by the moving company. I’d driven on icy roads to his three-story Victorian, where he said he’d pay me a month’s rent to dig snow and ice out of his gutters. In his driveway he pointed a garden trowel at the icicles hanging from his eaves. A ladder leaned against his ivy-covered wall. I’d told him to go fuck himself.

So I wasn’t sure I could trust my brother, even though his great motivation in life, ever since I’d returned to North Moreland, was to save me from the disaster he seemed sure I was heading for. But the rent was overdue, the fridge almost empty. I asked where the factory was.

“Right on Moreland Road,” he said. “Not too far to walk for a tough guy like you.” But he wouldn’t give me the name of the company or the address. He insisted on driving me there himself.

The twins screamed, and Rhonda called Brian’s name. “Ralph, the foreman, he’s expecting me to bring you over,” Brian said. “ I’ll be there in a half hour.”

After he hung up I dropped the phone on the floor and lay my head on the pillow, listening to the dial tone with my eyes shut. I felt a twinge in my back, an echo of old pain, and my head was muzzy from my late night with Livingston. So today was the day my laziness would end, if Brian could help it. Let it end, I thought. When the phone started beeping I replaced the receiver and went to the shower.

she’d come with me
but her eyes were on the singer
of a cover band
in a small night
club in Texas &

the longer he sang the more
she stared & the more he
returned the favor

it was
horrible I wanted to leave
but had I left she
might not have
noticed & the point

apparently

was to be noticed

no it was better to wait it out
not even the sappiest
lovers could
gaze at each other
this long without laughing I thought

then I tried to enjoy
the music but the music wasn’t

much

finally after she’d
slunk back in her chair scissoring
her smoke between second &
(same stanza)                        third fingers with her vodka
on rocks chilling her chest

she glanced
away from him

missing her chance
to catch me

Here my mother is the teenaged girl in the passenger seat beside my father. She pulls down her sun visor and rests her palms on her belly. Because she is prone to water retention, her fingers are swollen and her rings cut into her. But this is her second pregnancy. She is used to the discomfort. Fixing her gaze on her hands, she breathes deeply and intently until she is sure she can feel the baby breathing to her rhythm. She has calmed herself this way for three years, ever since she was sixteen and pregnant for the first time, sixteen and terrified, though back then there hadn’t been much time to dwell on fear. One day the doctor told her she was pregnant, and the next day, or so it seemed, she was a wife and a mother. Everything she did then, and everything she is doing now, including being in this car on her way to the Sweet Life Quality Foods headquarters in Connecticut, she is doing for her husband and her children. Her children must have a father, their father, and she believes it’s her job to make sure he sticks around. God knows she’s doing her best to keep him happy and in one piece. God knows it isn’t easy.

In the mirrored visor, she studies the dark circles beneath her eyes. She hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. Not since my father lost his job at the Sweet Life food warehouse for the third time – and “the last,” his boss had told her when she called to ask if he’d reconsider. “I’m sorry, Vicki, but he’s blown it for good this time.”

She could kill him sometimes, she thinks, shifting her gaze from her reflection to his profile. It’s as if he were the teenager in the relationship, and she the twenty-eight-year-old. In this moment he is singing along to the radio and tapping on the steering wheel as if he hasn’t a care in the world, as if the events of the past weeks hadn’t happened, as if that ambulance had not stopped in front their apartment on Main Street and rushed him to the emergency room. Feeling slightly uneasy, she considers what she’ll say and do once they reach their Connecticut destination. Her uneasiness is less about nerves and more about agitation over my father’s most recent escapade.  Typically, she would have tried to talk to him over the radio as he drove, regardless of whatever drama the previous weekend had brought, but something had changed. Something had started to shift within her at the ER when the doctor dropped his bomb on her. What my mother wanted to ask my father, she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t risk upsetting him. Her question would always remain unanswered. He would never tell her why he did what he did. Most likely, she suspected, he didn’t know the answer.

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
—W. B. Yeats

Because as grandma wolf
I snarled from a Halloween photo

every time she opened the fridge,
the first time my only sister’s first

child’s first child ever saw me
she screamed, ran away in terror,

called me the wolf man, as if she knew,
through her blood, my favorite movie:

old gypsy woman, pentagram in my hand,
childless, aloof, and alone,

my cocky cynicism
transformed by a pregnant moon.

And I do have a beard
and that widow’s peak, and a tendency

to change moods abruptly, but, hey,
who hasn’t?

Now, she thrills to the way I howl
and growl as I chase her through the house,

shrills in mock fear.  Mock because,
though she hasn’t yet seen The Daughter

of Dracula or The Bride
of Frankenstein, she somehow knows

about the silver bullet,
the one she was born with.