The idea of a meal hangs itself on 3 or 4 label-less cans
upended onto branches, fire taking the entire hillside
a blackened Griffith Park, balloon rubber in pink and green
their ribbony strings sketching hieroglyphs on the forest floor.
Hidden from view, keep them hidden from view:
a red comb, red shoes, a bush of pretense.
Inside-out the trouser pockets hang tongues like thirsty dogs
an exposure of intimacy as if a body were in full view,
the missing thumbs in the cup handle, the missing dog in the brush full of hair.
the out-of-sight ones behind the stacked mattresses,
coiled fetal into the metal pipes into what’s been swallowed
out of what bottle or syringe out of what brain was it revealed
masterfully to organize the dirt in this particular way.