Two guitarists compete for air space in the park,
and yet the thing I keep coming back to is that I
feel I was meant to be taller than I am, in fact
I know I should have been when the Sabbath
siren goes off like an air raid, its imminent
reminder to rest for the self-care commandment
in the neighborhood industrial apartment complex
where I lay my back on the grass to hear it crack
finally and predictably, so unlike the parks in
Sequoia where my father sent me a picture of a
rock, or a boulder, really, asking what I see in it,
his version of an inkblot test which I passed by
sending back the image with a cat drawn over it,
less a testament to our aligned anthropomorphic
imaginations and more so a trial of proximity in
the way that I own a cat and he knows it, the way
one may say offhand on a trip back home that
they’ve enjoyed the deviled eggs, and so now
they’re a staple of each visit, a sulfuric example of
the misplaced intimacies whose river of intentions
runs a clear and cool blue, like the ex who swore
she saw the boy version of me crossing Marcus
Garvey on a Wednesday, my face carved in rock,
my cheek on the grass in this cicada afternoon
where I pregame the picnic with plantain chips
since I am chronically early, taking a moment to
send a selfie to the group chat, and the photo,
which I like too much and can’t stop looking at,
gives me the foresight to know it will someday
serve the purpose of proving to my daughter that
her mother was once young and exemplary,
my only mistake telling people I’m a poet because
then they expect a body of work, and I cannot
instead point to my cheek here on the grass or
the catharsis of early dinner, since a poem is the
voicemail recorded quickly before the train goes
underground, or the counter space sacrificed for
Safeway daffodils, how your friends step off the
bus into the day’s boundless yellow glow, life’s o
utput the proof, the noticing, the noticing