Addressed to Maya Regarding Last Week

1.

Hmm and hmm and hmm

the birds and insects hum and stutter

now like children, and contain your crisis.

Live on drink and cigarettes like others

live on family and porcelain.

Eleven hugs a day means you're loved.

2.

You should have been earlier in my life.

Sequined capes and feather boas,

we will leave and you will wander

in paisley-printed cracked-wheat fields.

As much as I can change it, I will

help you.

3.

I can't hear

the sweat hiss on your skin

when you step in the embers and snuff out

fourteen years. Our daily-dailies

and sand and gravel and I

will help you.

4.

The whistle was too high to register.

The moment: a spotlight

on transgression, a cross-culture analysis.

I'm regretful, and it's on the hill

and setting over.