When I was a girl in Beverly Hills,
and things were just beginning to get bad,

they brought handwashing experts to prep school
one day.

Sun guzzles quick down August’s throat.

The valley otherwise
charred, this glade is
old-growth miracle.

The big-voice flashers.
Wings of metal and night.

Peak gust and west of July.

He wanted no money,
had nothing to sell,
didn’t boast or brag or bitch,
except a little bit.

Let her renounce sight and be unseen. Let her
cough ground coral in the shedding of a pewter
moon, that she, of all the innocents, should live.

Nowhere to go back to—they say—but there is somewhere to go.