“Thanks to El Niño, Thirsty California Is Suddenly All Wet”
“Tearful Obama Outlines Steps to Curb Gun Deaths”
—The New York Times, January 5, 2016

Old as the wind, The Boy blows, birthday every day. In the dead of the night, the life of the night, ravens huddle like dark organs along their favorite innervation. The Boy whines and whistles, summoning a season of brute relief.

Trade winds: Back then trade meant path; the path has weakened, and I want to wander in this newest, widest, needed whisk and weeping, my skin wet as a lasting lover’s, my hair slick in the style of twilight.

The storm monitored my dreams, interpreted my focal troposphere. A homeless family inhabited my house, like a gang of rain from the gutter; my living room was redesigned for easy dying; my dog was two dogs, barking at himself.

Most every explanation of the weather I read, I read in the paper, and today, after I got up and at them, I read the President had wept, too—for El Niño, La Nina, their briny blood, waste of splash. Faces surrounded him, labeled with loss. He wiped a national tear from a targeted eye.

All day clement drops bulleted to the ground, The Boy playing.

the feeder
creatures clash
share
enough
is enough

Publisher’s Note:

“Thanks to El Niño, Thirsty California Is Suddenly All Wet,” by Mike McPhate in The New York Times online (5 January 2016): https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/us/thirsty-california-is-suddenly-all-wet.html

“Tearful Obama Outlines Steps to Curb Gun Deaths,” by Eric Lichtblau and Michael D. Shear in The New York Times online (5 January 2016): https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/us/politics/obama-gun-control-executive-action.html

Bio: Bill Gottlieb