Vanity Fairground

Rabbit prints in the snow

but it’s LA in summer.

Anything white is chaff, the leavings

of wildfire after

it’s departed Saint Gabriel’s table,

lost dreams of escaping

in your clamshell car, the pearl within

opaline with the imprint

of smog seeping through

your serrated, chapped

cracks.

Still, follow

those four-toed tracks,

let them guide you

to a blank timetable stamped

existence marks the spot

above unfinished metro rails, poking

up and rusted through the center

like cavitied molars, an invitation

to delve into tunnels whistling

through unflossed gaps a tune

of roses and dodos, of

Pompeii before its burial, of the way

snow melts on sun-gnawed steel

girders, dripping to pool

in foot prints soon filled.