"California," "Hermeneutics," and "Russian Lit"

California

expresses you into the trees
as if Route 5/101 had spit you
 
from the failed gods of San Ysidro​
where a woman shoulders a child
 
from the blondness of LA
which does violence to icons
 
from a kingdom of gangs and tarps—
from the Grape Street Crips and the homeless—
 
and you find yourself , the trip opening
in a green shelter hurtling north
 
with the numb openness of your face
forgetting the pissed-in stalls of Del Mar at dusk
 
and your scars have vanished
and you can’t follow tonight, beneath the moths

Hermeneutics

after Paul Ricoeur

I read for the notions, I say. To know the writer’s life
is what I really fancy. Why else should I trace each
evolution of tense, each subtlety of phrase?
 
Bambi stands poised on the page, elegant,
beautiful, but I am skeptical of deer. Deer can kill
with their antlers—from the Old French antoillier,
 
a horn in front of the eyes. Is this deer some rogue unicorn?
Is the horn a stabbing horn? Plus, deer have cloven, dangerous
front hooves, sharp for defense, that also form
 
upside-down heart-shaped tracks. That tiny, remorseless
hoof forms the sign of love in the mud. Is its purpose
to coerce a reader to drop her guard? The writer leaves home:
 
A divorce? A subpoena? Another forest? Words
are a gossamer negligee, concealing the ugly bits
with chiffon, with lace, with blood-colored spandex.

Russian Lit

There was something
about his voice
when he lectured,
something about
his Russian books—
their suicide
protagonists,
their wrestle with
god. When he read
Tolstoy aloud,
I imagined
Count Vronsky, but
I never thought
of the train. There
was something a-
bout his Slavic
good looks, about
stiletto cheek-
bones and glossy
skin that made me
sweeten and rise
beyond the edge
of my little
life. After each
night’s class, I wished,
and shivered in
my marriage bed.
My body wept.