Walnut Creek Fault Finding

1.

My blonde
suburban
mother tries to
fly
in the socialite
newspaper
dumb show
of Bales Drive
under the dry
white sky
land abandoned
by the deer and
the crow:

2.

co-opted by the
claustrophobic
cat
domestica and
slobber-jawed
dog
snapping
cookie kids and
a flock of bat
toting young
hands fondling
a green-tree
frog.

3.

a word-camp
of post war
blood white,
and blue
anger flaring
soul drying
sodium.
Parents cured
broiled
bland by the
great war
smoked in
mushroom
deaths, we find
faults
to ignore

–Stephen Morse