Persimmon Pudding

I pile a multitude of fresh persimmons

on the cracked-up sidewalk every day

like so many pink suns setting on

a suburban Patagonia where they

rot between crooked lines of grass

and leave pale seeds like blind eyes

staring at the roots and steel branches:

my roots are rotten railroad tracks baptized

by years of dead leaves encrusted in rust,

and they breed branches like methed-out purple veins

that shed cinnamon sticks kids hang in their trucks

to hide the smell of weed-smoke from the same

girl from Mystic Lake who asks, “Do you know

how to make a pudding from the pulp in your sole?”

#2016