Enchiladas

I made an enchilada
casserole last night.
I may have made

some kind of enchiladas

a thousand times. 

No recipe, it’s in my head;
layers of pork and chiles,
onions and herbs,
tortillas and cheese.

Layers that live there
on top of the details
about dinosaurs
and California
and distant wars

that I shared playing
Jeopardy on Zoom
with my office mates
the night before.
Hope I didn’t bore them
-much.

When the enchiladas
were on the table
and the candles were lit,
we said a prayer
of gratitude

-for the love we shared
that day and every day,
for the kitten now in our lives,
for the departure of the toxins
from our skies.

We prayed that the toxins
in our national atmosphere
would depart as well.
Then we ate the enchiladas
and they were good.

High Noon

Everyone was
talking about it:
the color of despair.

Looking up the AQ
on sites like Purpleair.

When noon looked like
it had been drowned
in rusty water.

The gray replacement
was not a comfort
when we longed for blue.

And we declared,
Is that red eye my sun?

Oswald's grave

His mouth gaped,
made an O, 
an Oreo,

A gasping carp
on land mouth,

when the bullet
from Ruby’s snubnose

Colt Cobra .38
pierced his gut.

The gun then sat in
a white cloth bag
in a safety deposit box

for twenty four years
while it's ownership
was contested.

Ruby’s brother Earl
sold it for legal fees
and back taxes.

To a real estate developer

from Del Ray Beach.

He tried to sneak out the back door

of the auction at the Omni Hotel

with the revolver hidden

in a velvet Crown Royal bag.

Back home in Florida,

he fired hundreds of bullets
from the gun into a swimming pool.

Mounted them on plaques
and sold them to benefit
various charities and
environmental groups.

Beside Oswald’s grave
in Fort Worth Texas,

on the adjacent plot

is a grave stone, same size
and same pink granite

as his.

The name engraved
on the matching stone 
is Nick Beef.