The Dinosaur at the Bottom of Lake Tahoe

Trees turn to yellow heat, on the velvet
slope of a fault basin. Smoke-socked firemen,
mattocks in dirt. A chaos paintbrush
moving through its palette. Amid these photos
of loss, I'm sent tiny ads for new shoes.
Booze delivery apps. Undergarments
to compress my body into standard
shapes, blenders sent right to my doorstep
overnight. Some goods I own already.
At some point we have to admit our sins.
The dinosaur at the bottom of Lake Tahoe
was real to me, awkward kid in 1990,
submerged in snowmelt, waiting for my cold-
numb skin to wake so I could start swimming.
There was a sand bar 100 yards out—
I'd freestyle fast until my fingertips hit
something soft-solid and slipping (terrifying),
then belly-bump the lake floor sand and stand,
ankle-deep in alpine liquid, like some girl prophet,
as my skin sparkled and flamed, bright
in sudden summer air, riding the shadow thing
I knew could only destroy us.

Archaeopteryx: the Berlin Specimen

Imagine the sound of this psychopathic raven
   —a razor mouth, a killing claw. A nightmare
creature calling to its kin as it rose and fell.

   Its finders called it Urvogel—'first bird'
—a limestoned body like Lucifer broken flat.
   I've seen snowy plovers skitter the shore

ahead of my boots. Heard grackles
   in hotel eaves squawk at sunrise.
There are times when the image writes itself.

   How high did this transitional ancestor climb
before its crash, how close to heaven,
   as its tenacity and claws failed to open the sky.

No Future Sketchbook

Proud heavyweight, I'm part
Ichthyosaur in the water, part
Mammalodon when snuggled up
with my tall person, his skin
collagen enough to cover
his elongated skeleton.
As lovers, together we count
our narrow years. When he says
someday an inevitable death,
a cremation, I balk. Not at
the terror of our blink-out,
but at the bone grinder.
The unthinkable story that
no future sketchbook will describe
this specimen, stretched in luxury through the mud bed.
Tibia & femur & fibula & radius & humerus & ulna,
all his, all remarkable, all wrapped
around my mammoth body under blankets.
There is a coming loss of these longest bones.
On this weekday morning,
we've found a geometry that fits.
Tar pours all around us.

Chicxulub

We watched the star's
light intensify all week,
even in the daytime
sky—first a siphon
hole through wet air,
then a coquina shell,
then oyster shell, a
river stone, a boulder.
White and sun-bright,
we knew this must
be some divine reward
for our clade's success.
We'd covered every continent
with our sharp feet,
outrun the competition,
filled our strategic niche.
Some of us saw
the star swelling overnight
—its tail stretched out
like those same structures
we used for balance.
Some called it companion;
some turned their eyes.
Those who hid
missed the end.
The fire-sky.
They never saw
the atmosphere roll back
its blue main drape
to the eschaton
of ice and ash
and plasma flood.
Our gift from heaven.

Pacific Northwest Ice Storm

Two days till Christmas
the streets are so slick
both airports shut down.
Just millimeters
of glass on the wheels
and the tarmac, thin
but we're all grounded.
I hear a couple
talking, traversing
the neighborhood with
a garden shovel
and cultivator,
trying to open
the sidewalk.
I'm meant to be
in the air above
Tucson—my sister
makes a life where
inbound planes skim
surface thermals, then
bounce back in rerun.
My sister gives her blood
because her heart pumps
biochemical magic
for newborns. Rare.
She's mom to two tweens,
plus chronic fatigue.
Still, she gives her O-neg
away to babies.
In a past decade
she studied marine
bio in the second
mass bleaching event
on the Great Barrier Reef.
And four more followed.
When we were children
our orange muslin
wings propelled us down
the butterfly sidewalk
in Pacific Grove.
Grown, I return there.
A hermit crab moves
its body to the shell
of a passed-on common
periwinkle. A nudibranch
in El Niño slips across
the slick armored back
of a sea star. The last
few thousand western
migrating monarchs
death-grip eucalyptus,
dripping biblical.
Too far from the ocean,
I can forget that
I'm an animal.
In the glacier fields,
bare rock breaks where moss
hasn't yet had time
to grow. I can escape
my fears in weather
apps, in photographs,
reels, emails, badges,
notifications.
I scroll, looking for

data or hope or hallucination or dream the climate is not disarticulating the animals are not dissolving the strong countries are aiding the other countries all plastic really does get reduced reused recycled no one needs to burn jet fuel and poison just to see their families their beloveds there is a door to walk through it connects to all other doors like in that book like in that movie that tv show we are no longer divided we are no longer abandoned by our gods we are healing in the fireworks symphonic series finale glow of a lasting global peace

It's coming. It's just
a click away, I know it.

Seattle 109º / Psalm 51
           after Sylvia Plath and King David

Construction on the newest tallest tower
is paused. Scarlet boundary flags

flutter. A convection oven.
Tar won't set in this air.

Our biosphere manages us—

the jobs have come, the money.
The potted cacti on our windowsills.

Love, love, the low smokes roll

The planet sends us the desert.

Dead hornets, gum & cigarettes
litter the sidewalk. A Cascadia fever

heat dome—once-in-a-millennium some say but

we've seen the skyline haze over the rise
of a gasoline-crowded highway.

Some biologists say all life
is just Earth expressing its heat.

Second law of thermodynamics stuff.
Entropy.

Have mercy on me, O God.

T-Rex

I'm wearing a bad bra
in the T-Mobile store when
Stephen the Mobile Expert
tries to upsell me on data
plans & throw in an extra
Galaxy S23 for free & a
third line for free & free
codes for more free devices
with plans that (for free) I can
cancel at six months (no charge).
But hey I want to say
to Stephen a person made
that with their hands & breath
on a factory floor carved
in long days. But Stephen
isn't here for that story.
I need this new phone I
need it so with hot pink light
& white plastic buffed walls
& sense overload on a
picnic with my anxiety
here I am I am wasting
my first day of spring
after a growler of a
winter & the earth like
an aged planet is losing
its memory & I'm changing too
my arms are cramping up &
growing claws & my bad bra
starts to pull & ache &
the band constricts like a
reptile & the underwires
stretch & snap their curvature
& my breasts pour out & hooks
pop free from wire eyes & lace
tears off the craggy brackish
skin of my back & my
ragged clothes fall as the bra
races them to the floor where
it lands at my seismic foot
with three talons & killing
claw & I open my maw
to bellow my megafauna
bellow & I swallow
poor Stephen in one chomp
& turn the great wedge of my
body to the side &
the store manager collides
with my tail while I lift one
hallux to smash the displays
into my open mouth
crunching glass & solder &
metal & transistors
chewing them down into my
guts where they blend with a
masticated human who
until today was trying
to make a living in
a country choking on the
screen & money worship
called robust economy
as it crushed some of us
& turned the rest of us
into monsters.

There Are Too Many Pickles and it's Bringing America to its Knees

Trapped bright green life, floating sci-fi madness. A population
in brine. Glass cylinders marked by invisible fingerprints and factory hours.

Dill spear or hot-sweet. An ad-man promise: the cool slick slice with Swiss and mayo
on sourdough, teeth crunching through the inches. American dream of crisp snap.

The monolith of modern production has spun up a hundred ways to hold
summer's sunlight, wilting in salt.

Exemplars are kept on the fridge door, or behind the milk. Then one day
a whisper in the jar, first a creeping secret, then furry colonies.

Could be a whole empire, unmindful of its destined obsolescence.
Could be. Could not. Can't converse with a fungus.

West Cliff Drive

On the curving boulevard in the slipping
college town, where I was once young,
  the Pacific has consumed sidewalk sections

& every quarter mile a sign says, Remember!
There are Hazardous & Sudden Changes!
  as if the Earth hasn't been saying it to us

since we could still hear it.
Here, pelicans fly & dive into low tide, flipping
  feet-over-tail, mouths hidden in rolling foam.

Surfers float, catching the last of the day,
below gathered memorials carved in wood
  or spot-welded on sheet metal.

Pooled candles. We Miss You Elana.
Live Like Jake.
  One spooning pair has hitched their shared hammock

to scrub pines on the far side of the safety fence,
road-tripping kids have pulled their 4Runner
  up to the sidewalk & opened the gate to life.

In 1998 that fence was a suggestion
of standing boulders in the ice plant border,
  which today is blooming—one block magenta,

the next block goldenrod, then magenta again—
an aggressive succulent
  in the topsoil & the private thoughts

of visitors who've forgotten the names of local plants
& I'm heel-toe-heeling it on this road which seems
  to elongate as I go, in the way snakes bundle

then propel their bodies forward
& I'm facing into the sun & slithering
  towards the monarch sanctuary at Natural Bridges.

I'm already mourning a beloved
population—cut down from hundreds of millions
  in one bad nectar year. I want to help

heal this place but I'm made mostly
of that same stuff the moon pulls on. My body:
  just the planet expressing its heat.

Water hammers on buildings without purpose
or mercy; houses on the inland side keep
  their wood shingle beauty

or their mud-and-glass gaze
reflecting a skinny-dipping sun.
  When I reach the monarch boules they are tiny.

What was once overwhelming is difficult to see.
I sit on the steps of that same viewing platform
  I stomped on at four-years-old & five & six & eight, nine, ten.

The scent of drought eucalyptus is here,
the smooth wood walkway between host trees, too,
  but the winged masses are missing.

& since I'm no longer young my feet hurt & I dread
the long walk home & I do not find
  any awe here only grief

for what has gone & the reasons for it
along with the knowledge that
  I had a part in that.

But I wasn't trying to write this loss I was just walking
at sunset along a snake street with ice plant & scrub pine
  & a lighthouse & little pathways down to unstable cliffs

& sedimentary layers chewed by careless water & teased by sand fleas
& glowing Gen Z taking besties photos
  in that pink light—pink like another planet entirely—

& when their young faces fall into shadow they fly
ahead on the path into that light that light that light that light that light that
  light that fading deadly mythic fireplace light

a light for shedding clothes like the animal I am
& swimming in the ocean
  though I am no longer young

& when the sun dives in
each one of us
  on West Cliff Drive

stops
in
  place

to face its final rays.

Fruita

We lost all tether to the divided country
those mornings when we woke
to an open blue, a picnic table, bags of pomes
picked from centenarian fruit trees.

We lived on apples & pears & dark skies.
Andromeda transmogrified in our binoculars
from light point into disc—a galaxy caught
side-on, four-times larger than our own spiral.

In that pitch, any single star could have been
a trillion. The red earth cliff
behind our tent bloomed rust at dawn,
we brought our boots to its wash

& followed cairns up the dry river. Water
hollows made caves for animals & us to play in,
no care around our eyes. We were willing fossils
for some future sketchbook, now finally alive.