Two Poems Edgar Kunz (bio) Going Alone now in Oakland. Thin cloud rustingover Temescal, garlic simmering in the pan, lavender potted and long deadin the breezeway. I start the water, carry the milk crates in from the garage.You with your mother in Los Angeles. The lanterns we scavenged and hungat the ceremony now a soft racket in the magnolia. Me turning an oldsummer over, the one where we slept most nights in a park in Hartford,bedded down in the soaked grass. The local kids coming always after darkto tag the pumphouse, sling rocks at the heron cages. Their bright,startled cries and us burrowing deeper [End Page 182] in our bags. I start unshelvingmy books, fitting them side-by-side in a crate. How one time a guardcame hollering, whipping his light over the lawn and they took off, ditchingtheir backpacks, the cans, their names silvering the brick. We watchedas they tore down the moonlit hill, bare legs flashing, headed for the carthey stashed at the turn-off, the guard close behind as they vaulted the fenceand hit the blacktop sprinting, picking up speed — the two of us clutchingat each other, wincing, whispering. You saying you hope they get busted.Me wanting them to get away clean. [End Page 183] Michael If we met up in the iced-over lot at the neighborhood’s edgewe were kids in — grid of low-slung ranches sunkunder the lengthening shadows of larch and pine,each street slanted toward the state building where our folkscollected their checks on the first of each month — and if your eyes were glossed with oxys and a weekwithout sleep, body a loose frame of copper piping proppedunder your oversized coat, and we stood, face to face —Michael, what would be left between us? What would remainof the time we tunneled under chainlink after the Sanborns’ house burned down, slippingbetween the brick pallets and front-end loaders, lookingfor something to claim? Or that July we worked stripping kudzuand poison oak from your side-yard on the promise of a few bucksfrom your dad, our longsleeves matted with pine pitch and sweat? We found a yellow jacket nest, a paper lantern buried deepin the brake. You dared me to hit it with a wiffle ball batand I did and the yellow jackets stitched my chest and armswith fire. I came back last Christmas and sat on the hard edgeof my little brother’s twin bed as he showed me how to thumb an imaginary bullet into a handgun with replica etchedon the barrel. Taught me words like breechblockand chamber-throat. Blowback and primer. Showed me howto switch off the safety, to keep my finger away from the triggeruntil I’m ready to pull. The way your brother Daryl [End Page 184] took himself out of this world. I thought of you, thirteen,weighing out nickels in your bedroom at your dad’s place.Twisting a dutchie, licking it shut. You didn’t give a shit,but I stuffed a paper towel tube with dryer sheets and we blewour smoke through to hide the smell. All I have of you now is rumor: a few run-ins with the cops for small stuff —petty theft, possession — that you knocked up a girlfrom Willimantic. That you were faded on cough syrupand drifted into oncoming traffic on 84, limped awaywith a sprained ankle but otherwise fine. I don’t know anymore what swerves us from disaster. I don’t knowwhat separates us. All I can do now is praise the state-cutchecks and the baggies of pills. Praise the quick transaction.Praise the no-look pass, the twenty twisted into a palm. Praisethe Robitussin-kiss. The slow drift of the wheel. The soft shoulder. [End Page 185] Edgar Kunz Edgar Kunz is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a 2017 nea Fellow in Creative Writing. His poems appear in agni, Narrative, New England Review, Gulf Coast, and other places. Copyright © 2017 The...