December 7-13, 2015: Lisa Zaran and Jan See King

Divinity Trailer Park, Ridgecrest

My sisters and I were madly in love with a half black,
half white, half puerto-rican homosexual boy named Rafael.
He was perfect, caramel skin and lips you could create a colony
of beautiful children on.

Taller than the other boys his age, displaying early the signs
of real-man masculinity with his sinewy, rope-like muscles
and dark shadow above his bedroom mouth. Most striking
were his eyes, white-green. So green they were silver.

So silver that when the light struck them in a certain way
one was sure he was blind. I mean, the boy wore high tops
when slip-on’s were cool. His hair rode out all around him
in kink and rebellious abandon.

It was all we could do to not die right in front of him,
hearts bleating out their please choose me, please hold me song.
Loving him so strongly, so truly, so purely as only children can.
An entire summer we spent creating our future lives with him.

Spending our days on poetic imagination, romantic inclination,
hopeless devotion. Jen decided that they wouldn’t have any children,
due to the fact Rafael did not want to share her with anyone.
Tori countered by boldly stating they would have ten children,

each one more beautiful than the last. I couldn’t decide.
One minute I thought Rafael and I would have two children,
one boy one girl. The next minute I liked Jen’s idea, compelled
to have Rafael all to myself every second of every day,

but not really knowing what I would do with him.
Eventually the innocent lust of a few pre-teen sisters wore down,
attention focused on more pressing requirements, the new school year,
our parents divorce, a 600 mile move to the sixth largest city in the nation

where not only were there enough Rafael’s to go around
with their strike-you-dead-on-the-spot good looks and safety in knowing
they could never love you back, there were the speechless other boys.
The kind you really had to watch out for.

The Anomaly

40 feet high-no escape
from sight-the eye takes
it in like the eye for a lynx
pilgrimage across the rainbow-
it held there 15 feet by 10,
the image looming over
the thruway. Beware
of ambush, I say, Heed
the possibility of a sign
leading us into temptation
for this is commercial space;
this is roadway protected
space. This is hygiene
highway where mood swings
are permitted only
during emergencies.
The pistons pump provisionally
evocative only of sobriety
finely tuned, yet here it is
Jose Cuervo, “freeze and enjoy”
bottle prevalent.
Well, I take the whole sign in,
The irony of its placement,
veer off at Fordham Road,
contemplate that melt-
down silver bullet liquidity.
I come to a halt, hop out,
see a rocker flipping out
on a satellite or drone laser
fungus cloud. I think fast,
toss a dollar in the open
case, hold an image of
that Jose Cuervo below-
the-border bottled lantern
light (for so it appeared
on the billboard, luminescent).
To my surprise the singer
quenched, shutter-snag
nerves nosedived in the image
bottled; and, for then, fraying
erased. For then, the burnout gone.