In a twenty-year temperature inversion
California walks in to me through
the windows of a hot car with no
air conditioning, it’s summer and
the heater is full-blast, it’s a hundred-
degree day, I am younger and California
is cleaner, the engine doesn’t self-
eject and it jets out oil all across
the country. This awful air of
ourselves, we have nowhere to drive
but down into it, the freeway
folding over and under, everything
settling which also means seething,
the old rocks with all the time
in-between them and the road
only a ribbon of exhaust
held harmless between the jaws
of a geologic age.
