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there to the dogs. Those dogs. Those mean little dogs. California. Texas. Baton Rouge. Wide range of melody lines, if you follow my drift. Very little loyalty though. That’s what I’ve found. Very little. Grackles, on the other hand, you can almost always count on. Very trustworthy bird for place and time. Wake up to a grackle and a wonderful certainty fills your aching bones. Calexico. Texarkana. One of those. Long-tailed screeching bravado in the face of another scorching sun. Brings all kinds of news. Breaking news, if you like. But losing track of people altogether—that’s the worst. The feeling. The ache in the chest. Completely emptied out. No people. Some, just gone forever now. You can’t help that. But the other ones. The ones still somewhere. Still somewhere else. What happened there? Where’s the string? If there ever was one. You can’t not believe in that. Still, some I must’ve just drove off. I admit. Must have. Why in the world would they want to stick around a burning bush? A flaming Chevy. Fire blowing out both my Anglo-Saxon ears. Fire blowing out my ass. Catastrophic. A devastating smoking heap. Some of the other ones just fled, I guess. Just ran off. Some came back but it was plain by then they’d never find in me what they were looking for. Plain by the look in their downcast eyes. Terrible disappointment that has no end. That I can see. No end in sight. And me still banging around these dusty streets searching for breakfast. At this hour. Slinking sideways between slat picnic tables, old bent ranchers, Open Road Stetsons; talking steers and heeling dogs, straight-up Christians praying over crispy bacon strips and runny eggs. You find a clean dry space on the plaid oilcloth across from two skinny Mexican kids so lost in love their hands are stuck with superglue. Black Aztec eyes turned inside out; blind to the nasty world, gorging on each other’s mouths while their pancakes turn stone cold.
    All that time I’m referring to now. Careening around. Must’ve been working on something or other. Must’ve done some kind of job. That’s what it was. It dawns on me now. Down there in dusty Alpine waiting for a check. Guy’s name was Roberts Clay. Not a woman at all. They said I couldn’t miss him. Carried a big black hickory walking stick. And here it was three whole days and no show from this Mr. Clay. Down to my last good pair of SmartWool socks. Staggering through the watermelon trucks. Could a matchbox ever in this world hold my clothes?

Mission San Juan Capistrano
    It’s a weird shirt, this one. Makes me feel like a little boy again—too small and tight and pink. It’s a handmade shirt. My mother made it and that’s a sure tip-off to the kids in school that you haven’t got any money. I’m a little boy no longer but when I put this shirt on that feeling revisits me. It’s not the same shirt as back then. I’d never be able to get that one on. But this one has haunting similarities and casts the same spell over my upper torso. The chest feels vulnerable and bony. My neck sticks up like a chicken. The arms poke out. My entire being is up for grabs. I’m somewhere between six and nine. An older woman is clutching my hand. A linen handkerchief dangles from her wrist, tucked into her watch-band. The coastal breeze blows her black lace skirt around my shoulders. I’m sure it’s my grandmother. I recognize her Iroquois hands with the bulging veins. I have the same thumbs as her. We were born on the same day in the sign of Scorpio. She showed me once in the sky—how the tail reaches clear out across the entire Mojave. The deadly tail. Pigeons are flapping all around our heads, trying to land on our shoulders and arms. We’re feeding them corn out of paper cups. The Spanish fountain is trickling. Brass missionbells chiming a mournful dirge. The war is certainly over, but where was it? Distant islands? Across the sea? I don’t know my father at all. I’ve maybe seen him twice. Both