the saints haven’t got our backs anymore 

and I’ve learned to accept it

St. Lazarus of the patio 

has lost his porcelain head 

and all our candles have melted away 

and it’s only spring

we should move to Detroit

my wife says

yes?

the houses are cheap

you could buy like 10 

for what we paid for this place 

and there are lots of black people

and everyone’s killing each other

murders everyday

it’s like the wild frontier 

that all these stupid Americans dream of 

we can have it all

she says

of course we’ll have to home school the kid

I hear Hamtown is pretty hip

Hamtown?

she asks

do they really have ham?

yeah baby

it’s a Polish community

they have every kind of dead animal 

you can think of

they say the streets smell like blood

Wonderful!

she says

It should be noted 

that there is now a significant Muslim population

 in the city of Hamtramck

they don’t eat pork

so I’ve been told

but you can’t stop Americans from slaughtering pigs

no matter how loud you scream.

 We recently took a family vacation out to Houston and Galveston Island. It was our baby’s first visit to the beach. Spending a week in Houston made me realize how small and small-minded Austin is really is. Everywhere we went there were people speaking in foreign languages. Real ethnic food. World-class museums. A zoo. It’s a real city – the fourth largest in the nation. You can drive fast there and people seem to get it. We stopped and talked to folks every stop we made, from the doughnut shop to the bookstore. And something that my wife pointed out: there were black people everywhere. Nobody seemed to be worried about it. Just the other day, my friend Jack got called back into work, after his shift, apparently, there were “gangsters” taking over the venue. He went back to bust some heads. Turned out, some black people were hanging out after a slam poetry event and the delicate white staff got scared. Poor babies. In conclusion, spending a week in Houston, it was easy to see how much Austin is like a cheap hand-me-down Disneyland for soulless, self-proclaimed progressive white people.

We fell in love with Galveston. I’d like to live there some day.

I took my family to Palmetto State Park yesterday. I hadn’t been there since I was a child. For all you city slickers, in Austin, who read this, it’s only an hour away and well worth the drive.

he had dirty dishrags and a bad heroin habit and towels in the sink  

he kept the curtains closed between his room and ours

so I was okay with him staying as long as he wanted        

whether it be months or years     

and my wife was fine with it, so that was that

every morning he’d make coffee and I’d make scrambled eggs and french toast

while he worked on the NEW YORK TIMES crossword puzzle

sometimes he’d cut his own hair and leave small locks on the floor    

(brown with a hint of gray)

he would always keep candles lit and match boxes made in India

and I’d imagine those little Indian children working in a factory

dipping each little match stick into red sulfur paint

and then going home to say their prayers before brushing their teeth 

and going to bed.

I leave the house after dark, when the cats are out and hardly any cars exist except on the main street through town. I go to the Laundromat at night to avoid the people.

I stand under the florescent lights and peer through the huge glass windows, where I can see half the world inside and half the world outside, all at the same time.

I see myself where I also see a storefront across the parking lot.

There are many streetlights that look like small misshapen moons.

And it stays quiet, quiet, even on the drive back home.

I always take a different route returning home than leaving from home.

And it never seems strange to me at all.

There was an old man who lived across the street who used to sit out on the front lawn with a huge bloated whale belly and no teeth to speak of. He had told me that his liver was giving out and that he coughed up blood with some regularity. He finally died and his old lady moved back to Arkansas, which I assume is where he was from and where he was buried.

There is a new couple that lives there now. They moved in just after the great fire that swallowed up half of Bastrop County. The man has only one functioning eye and the lady, a red haired dame; I’ve never spoken to.

Now and again, the would-be Cyclops brings offerings to our family: oranges, head of lettuce, potatoes, old cassette tapes of Mojo Nixon and Huey Lewis. He has also offered to buy our car, but I know that he will not give me what I want for it.