the white dog haunts me around the corner,
my solid stolid saint
through the yellow streets that fluttered,
the trees and their leaves clattering together,
gold and cracked grey
syringes under the bridge,
crunching underfoot.
he eats his luck for dinner
pale bear at my shoulder.
my father sits on the floor at home,
the roof slanting into his bed,
drinking apricot liquor, humming in his throat.
i was baptized in creased white,
gauze like bandages
that float away and take your arms with them.
our truck's wheels baptized each time we crossed the border,
driving through the furrows of water and bleach,
wiping out serbian disease
sterile like john the baptist, each place past cleansed
from our soles,
if he had lived in the black mountains.
the lake was green and femi spoke the father's name
in another tongue (& the son & the spirit)
lay me down in the jade water
and ripped me out again.
the apricot tree blooms in the spring
ripe golden peach white
swallowing our satellite
shutting out the rays and news and the world off our peninsula
fragmentary peninsula
