can i lay in bed all day listening to doug sahm don’t turn around, something’s gaining? the cat curled between my legs. i have closed all the windows though it is nearly eighty degrees. to sweat myself out. the unbelievable heat of two pm. on the sidewalk, a man with a long pointed beard, dressed in all blue, picks through the trash for beer bottles and pickle jars to recycle; ten cents a piece. the downstairs neighbor wails into a receiver well, i wasn’t asking the whole world, why did you let me leave? or so it seemed she was speaking into a phone as no one answered her. tell me: what are the purple blooms that grow only in california? pushing up against the window screens, turning the whole room, not like a bruise, but the same strange yellow-purple?