Signs

I was driving around and wanting

a wooden tongue

so I’d be out past saying,

past suggesting.

Stitch my lips shut

to come-hither-

I-am-one-of-the-wonders-

of-the-world-I-am-a-neighborhood-

too-dangerous-to-visit.

Soft palate. Twists. Clack of tongue.

Any red tree.

Tequila sunrise

without the sunrise in it.

Then the afternoon’s

dark wooden door’s

hand-lettered sign: NO ADORATION TODAY

O, random and oracular lettering,

side-street accuracy.

I want

the 2 MILLION RENOVATIONS—

my new value now so beyond reckoning

as to prompt historic, fuchsia-laden,

hanging-garden-type devotions.