After “Spanish Lady”, Irish traditional

White crane walking like a bag
Out of the hatch of rosemary.
The white crane tugs and fades.
Two brothers love the same woman.

I move my hopes over my hair
and then over my whole body.
In the botanic trash along the 101
pomegranate branches like threads on a screw.

“I saw a lady on a chair
Washing her feet in the LA River!”

The mountain lions
with their fists like flour sacks
carefully descend the mountain
at angles. Roses flop in the winds.

In a song and on tv
a brother kills his brother
over a woman
like a ball into a mitt
or with a cord.

“I saw a lady on a golden chair
washing her feet in the LA River.
And then she fled on
her little ankles like wheeled toy trucks.”

My lover lies facedown
on the hotel bed.
I pour my hair from his head to his calf.
He falls asleep.

A drone carries its four hands
like hawks carry their nails.
“Brother I saw a long-haired lady
brushing her hair with a silver comb.”

Out of the stucco house.
Olives on the sidewalk. The liquor store,
the curtain store. All the songs swing
like the legs of drying clothes. TV in a door.

Meat on the billboard. Address on the stucco.
My lover’s body is a booth
in the bed. The leaf blower gulps
then goes again.

The red pomegranates swing.
“Say to our mother
That I will bring dinner from work.”
There is a water tank,
there is a fire trail.

A rotisserie chicken
for dinner tonight.
The LA River through the vegetables.
The crane bounces. Behind the high school

the hard headwaters of the LA River.
I bend on my naked lover.
I drive my shining hair down his spatial body.
The white crane opens its wing
and raps, raps its wing.

***

Photo by Shea Rouda on Unsplash