This is atypical, and probably also a mere draft.


A kind of cake that repels
Cicada song moving in waves
A thick rosewater syrup
Across ravines of sycamores
Crawling in crates belowdeck
According to some stochastic rule
Arriving behind glass
Above the peeling bark
Polished nightly
Locking into another pattern
Before the doors are locked
Cascading away out of earshot
By wage workers leaving the strip mall
To cluster at dusk by the river

You arrive on Route 101
A few blocks from the cramped house
From the affluent towns to the north
Where your folks live
For one seventy-five
With a garden full of squash
Since two bucks is too much on principle
Where feet swelled with beesting
Or 41 from the south
Turned out to be yours
For two twenty-five
And the new subdivision
Since two-fifty exceeds means
Means that sycamore, song have fallen away