For A New Yorker From A New Yorker

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O California
Sarah Holland Batt

I want to wake in the lagoon of the sky
where sunlight binds the mutilated palm-tree dawn
like duct tape, an aerial shot rolling and rolling
out of town in the muffled trunk of a brown panel van
along the death roads, the desert roads, the hairpin turns,
California, the desert silvering in my eye like a coyote,
I want to swim in the jewel jade pool of your lonesome foothill vowels,
stretch out under the mirroring clouds like a million rooftop deck chairs,
feel that blankness unfurl in my mind like luxury,
California, your beautiful blankness, your sheen.
O, shake me a basil gimlet at Silver Lake
and tell me about your tattoos, hermana,
how death is that bad tooth wobbling in my head,
in my head, California, that skyline that breaks
into backdrop hills I know like nostalgia,
pink saguaro and sumac, the ripe berries
smashed like bodies,  each ragged cactus cross
hoisting up against a silver desert screen,
California, and night that goes on like a drive-in,
palms exploding like napalm, fireworking over everything.
I want to ride the long smooth tan body of California,
I want to eat the bear of the flag of California,
I want to roll like a corpse off the highway
of your chase scenes, I want my perfect teeth
preserved, California, my teeth buried in the earth
like a curse, California, and won’t you show me
where the bodies are kept, California,
won’t you show me, show me, show me.

The poem appears in  this issue

The next New Yorker page is  here. 

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