Dear California Arts Council, this is just to say, that after my presentation, for my in-kind match I am deducting the price of a pair of gloves because we stayed too long in the hot pools and got caught in a snowstorm over Yuba Pass. I had to put chains on Ken’s car, because he didn’t know how, and then I couldn’t write for ages afterwards with my poor frozen hands. On the long straight slaughterhouse stretch of Highway 99, we gauged the distance of approaching cars in our lane by measuring how close together the headlights were. We hoped they weren’t in our lane. And we measured the speed of our death accordingly. And after that, I could only think in broken haiku.
3/12/83
The precision of bird wings
slicing through the air,
A scythe of feathers.
Honey locusts
looking up through the mouth
of a cliff to the sky.
Hydrants aching
for a dog’s leg trickling water
urging the bladder onward.
Indian hot Springs,
Big Bend, Pit River we were hot
stones floating in the pool.
On I-5, the transparency of trees
hiding winter’s houses in the hills
clothed like green brides.
3/12/83
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