The Oakland Blue-Light

Moonfuck me,

she says, but (she lied to me again)
and I am contemplating the ways by which I
must unspool myself from her, like the extrications of beaded strands of
DNA, but my memory is tainted full of
love.

And I am desperate for her, and hungry for her–
I want to separate myself from her, unstick our shadows
that merge in the midst of veiled, green-struck nights.

She lives in Oakland, and is Oakland–

The song of that city, which rises by the morning ashes to fester
on gentrification, the rising works, of

the cops are prowling, for it is broad daylight
and the children walk too far
to school.

(Melissa Valentine never regrets to inform,)

I pick up loops of daisies and wildflowers–
I braid them together with the plastic necklaces that
adorn soda cans, I buy hot cheetos from a mother, I walk home
from the store.

she moves from the center of the world,
to move away, and away, and away.
And she is Oakland, great city, beloved city–
all of its cracks and pains and nuances–
like the spine of an old matriarch creaking to
assume her master, you hear her churn and regurgitate
old harms, flung at the sun-shocked asphalt
where glass glitters like moonstones in
the cooling wind-light.

and it hurts when she thrusts inside of me–
infinite pains and she threatens to let go,
like a stressed belief, that relief will come
if she just hurts and hurts and hurts
enough.

She is beaded curtains, a lark, a splash of rain-light
that comes from the smacking of broken fire
chains.

She wants to move away.

For she says that this city is no longer
her own, but it belongs to me, (me, me, me), she says:
foreign invaders, trickling in from suburbia and mystic
tunnels that pretend at graffiti and laughter. You, she says,
are not an artist, and you are hardly a lover either.

Become me. If you can threaten to be that
much. You come here to study, to learn, to take the anodyne of culture,
before moving to the Midwest, or Korea, or wherever the fuck
you people go. You came here to leave, like leaf shadows of the night,
and the least you could do
is pretend you love me,
tell me you care,
(eat my rent, eat my rent, eat my blessed rent)

before you deign to go

home.