Rambling girl spoke of shirking her mother
land, Anne Murray songs,
the morally superior and migrating south.
She harboured an impulse to haunt
Big Sur, disturb Henry Miller,
though it meant straying off the I-5.
By Frisco, she was plummeting,
lollipops licked, pubic hair drenched,
small indentation behind her ears dry.

Illegal as any breaststroking the-Rio-Grande
wetback, she adopted derelict kittens, drummers,
ghost wrote rock reviews, screenplays, phone sex scripts.
Detected by no one, she relished peanutty Paydays,
played solitaire on the futon. Cavities, lonesomeness
swelled. She met Jello. Unrequited esteem.
He called her cheesehead as if she were from Wisconsin.
Her first LA boyfriend liked Doll, or My Nordic Princess,
as if she were a blow-up or a cruise ship.

Instincts erode. She persisted in exile.
Why not?
They don’t know she’s ditched the nation
via Pacific flyway. They’re too wintry, too white,
too busy redressing the past, the visible mistakes,
to notice she too too is exotic.
Coral in their aggression,
always courteous, gusto beneath them.
If she goes back she intends to arrive.
Like an American.
In a helicopter, like Bill Gates.
They will smile.
They will be pissed, despite themselves.
They.