Letter to the Neighbor after We Moved to the Good Part of Town

Jeff, I brought you pomegranates

from our tree.

Jeff, this is the first crop

from land called mine. I’m a city boy.

A homeboy.

My wife & I once lived in a cracked

apartment on the bad side

of town where you can get anything

if you’ll pay dearly enough.

We lived near the freeway

where homeless men push fruit-

filled carts—empty bottles & beer

cans, blue tarps, torn cardboard,

& hidden under an army blanket,

a solitary, folded picture.

When we married, we purchased

a home near train tracks where junkies

harvest track marks & each full moon

we dreamed them howling, love-

struck coyotes.

Jeff, I brought you this basket

of firstfruits because I’m one of the

good ones.

So if one night, you should drive-

by on your way home from work,

collared shirt, in your weakness,

reeking of coffee & tobacco

& secret whiskey, if you should see

me, a tattooed

cholo

dancing

on the roof of his house, a quart of malt

liquor & what looks like a glass pipe

in my hands, & if you should hear me bark

at the dark sky’s bright bounty,

Jeff, remember this treaty of pomegranates

we made.