"Walnut Creek Fault Finding"

Stephen Morse

1.

 

My blonde
  suburban
  mother tries to
fly
in the socialite
newspaper
dumb show
  of Bales Drive
  under the dry
  white sky
land abandoned
  by the deer and
  the crow:

2.

co-opted by the
  claustrophobic
cat
  domestica and 
slobber-jawed
dog
  snapping
  cookie kids and
  a flock of bat
  toting young
hands fondling
  a green-tree
  frog.

3.

a word-camp
  of post war
blood white,
  and blue
anger flaring
  soul drying
sodium.
  Parents cured
  broiled
  bland by the
great war
smoked in
  mushroom
deaths, we find
  faults
to ignore