Table of Contents
Where We Grew Up: A Cyber Chapbook
Small Game Collector
Afraid of the Smudge
Where We Grew Up
Confirmation
Small Town Sex Education
August in Escalon
Requiem
Something About the Author
Poetry Home Page
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August in Escalon
Here in the land of
churches and gas stations,
we move sparingly and slow
in the simmering heat.
Peach fuzz rises with the sun.
Days, over-exposed and glittering,
melt into the same twenty four hours
of recycled white noise.
Asphalt softens like canal bank mud.
around concrete malls.
Outside, roses cremate
themselves colorless;
blackbirds haven't the energy
to flap or complain.
A slow freight screams,
drags itself toward the cool Pacific,
steel and grease churning
along burning rails.
I sweat, leaning into the open vents
of a straining swamp cooler,
pregnant, nineteen and newly married,
breathless in some dark corner,
wondering how the hell
we ever made it this far.
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