I don't believe in Poetry as an act of mysticism.

I don't believe in the sanctity of dead things.

I think magic happens quietly, unbidden.

​

All along I was in charge of your well-being

and all along what we were involved in

on this planet was a sort of metaphysical

freeloading, a failure to take account.

​

A photograph of my mother in a linen shirt

in the 70s, hair huge, speaking Spanish

in a land of disease we called the New West. She says "todo o nada" to the mystic poised

​

on the love seat, to the forlorn pup pissed

on the couch. I don't believe in Utopia

or Thomas More. Or my father in a hairshirt

who never meant to die for this. I told Mom,

​

sipping a Coors, that in the Middle Ages,

in Chaucer's time, women were witches

and they brewed all the beer. She asked

"who's Chaucer?" then said, "You're lying.”