Our Father’s New Young Bride

Climbing Salton Sea as if it was a mountain
looking for my father who is fishing,

a loaf of unspoken bread on his lap.
Catching the wolf of Christ,

he throws it back, “Too small.” he says.
There among the reeds

the baby Moses of a turtle---
its shell as soft as a baby’s behind.

We drove back to my father’s desert house,
orange cactus on either side of the road.

“Boys, time can not escape time.” he says to us.
He always calls us boys.

Our stepmother’s belly tightens
as we stomp into her house.

Her stepsons in their fifties and sixties,
she only twenty-four.

She is too young to be able
to hide her ill-found jealousy,

And heads into the kitchen
to make us dinner.