Schema

In the field of traumas come the base savannas--crosshairs tighten 
on the flaring pink of the evening.

Recognize the world. After the bit of blue, after a window opened 
to air and the portioned stereo of love and grandeur, after--

mother sews a fell-off button, heats a stew, sews at the factory, 
re-stews, tires, starts (again),

father shortens a barrel, leans blast-weapons beneath windows, 
stacks ammo with scream and apocalypse.

Under cover, you are dead behind the couch when they knock.

From the first, in the glossed-over city where none reprimand 
violence, the palms executed along the auto avenues thrive--
a pitch-staggered procession in white-painted trunks.

The memoir has shown how bitter and relentless is the rind--
privacy flowers pubescent, hopeful to outlast time.

Traffic flows or stops on elevated structures in denial of the seven-
point-two,

and in the aftermath of advertising, children wander the highway in 
search of litter.

The citizens are trembling among the trembling.

Against the green strip--against the urbane and its expansion into 
the continent, the boulevard is the last boundary between the sky 
and the low-lying building,

though it is too accomplished among the rest of the wreckage.

They have their memories. The trigger is set on annihilation.

from A Carnage in the Lovetrees by Richard Greenfield. Copyright © 2003 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. All rights reserved.