SO MANY CALIFORNIAS

My first California lifted the blanket from her sandy basin
and for years my eyes ached in a dazzling white terrain
so dry and burning hot I was always thirsty for sodapop 
always scorching my feet on warped sidewalks and wavy clay rooftops.
In that California turquoise Thunderbirds cruised down palm-infested alleys
past burning incinerators
through Jewish kitchens Japanese living rooms Mexican bedrooms and
into the only faith of fast becoming that all homes followed.
My first California house wrapped me in its cool crepuscular air
dark furniture milling around like barn animals
watching over me as gifts appeared in corners
shoelaces tied themselves milk turned brown and sweet
hair grew under the bed and teeth transformed overnight into dimes and quarters.

A mean California woke me every day with the lion roar of jets
on their morning swim in brown haze
splashed fresh orange juice in my face
put a Helms donut in my hand
sent me out into God’s pizza oven
wearing shorts and sandals and big eyes that saw too much.
In that place teachers made you cry schoolwork made you cry other kids made you cry
pale green walls slow clocks tiny hard chairs ink stains on your pants 
derisive laughter bad lunches twisted you with the shame of tears.
That same California marched me around an elephant big as a house
made only of bones unstuck from viscous bubbling pits
showed me hundreds of bone wolves sucked screaming into the hungry muck
their teeth sunk deep in the napes of tarshackled sloths and pigs and told me Son 
this is the smoky home of every boy who will kick your candy ass
every girl who will stroke your tender soul with a potato peeler.

In another California a dank canyon sang frog lullabies to my bones
and they grew longer and ached and my penis grew longer and ached in its nest of lusty new hair as
I sat high up in my pungent bay tree watching the great randy dance—
possum pouches stuffed with slimy pups waddling
through wet papery layers of dark dead leaves breeding 
earwigs centipedes and snakes so black tiny quick they looked like the tongues of snakes
while a thousand intent drones clamored to fuck a single fat queen
hairy dogs humped with shivering hips and drooling growls
and the moonlight covered everything with a faint fishy perfume.
Below me the curtains opened wide on a single proscenium window where nervous girls danced together 
caressed each other’s damp waxy teenage skin practiced their moviestar kisses
and laughed with high-pitched longing and generosity as only girls can laugh
slipped on their slinky nightgowns and gave themselves soul and body to the moon.
California I whispered you are so good to me I don’t deserve this gift
this vision of something like my future
yet a big anxiety churned inside me as my eyes began to twist and shrink.
And the moon who they say is a woman
the moon who blesses California month after month with blood and beauty
the moon who is so fertile and fecund and horny that women astronauts don’t dare walk up there for fear of getting pregnant
the moon who is neither man nor woman whispered to me the secret contract that death makes with love
and told me one day when I have gotten to know love I will hear from the moon’s messenger 
and my dying will begin. 

One of my Californias broke my arm in a rollerskating rink 
broke my hip on a football field nearly drowned me in a wave that broke on the beach
and then one humiliating night at a party lousy with my enemies
that California went and broke my spirit.
That was a dangerous California 
dappled with dark corners and child molesters 
poison oak rusty nails vicious guard dogs razor-skegged surf boards
venomous tongues choking diseased kisses fanged vaginas
and I never slept there but once and then I woke up with
such a terror in me I have never really laughed or loved since.
I’ve run into that California in Paris and New York City
and at unexpected tired moments surrounded by my enemies
but as you might guess I mostly run into her when I’m mucking around inside my own embattled heart.
Then I say Oh California you are my first and only dream my blood my skin
you are the yellow naugahyde sofa all my memories snooze on I say
Oh California why do you taunt this sad sick heart and will I ever sleep again?

Up north a chilly California chained me to a chair made me eat books
played the blues till my ears grew lids 
grabbed my curly Jewish hair shoved my big nose in French Italian Swedish movies till I smelled older than my years then
mortified my brain with British epistemology German ontology Greek aesthetics Martian teleology
till I almost forgot my roots in the hot lazy Santa Monica sand.
This was a California so different from any I had known
that I wanted to give her another name
but she wouldn’t allow it.
As my skin grayed and my muscles flattened I imagined my way around the world 
woke up to other dreams on other continents
forgetting the thrill of sliding down an outside wave 
the taste of sandy hot dogs and icy cokes in the shade of the lifeguard station
the smell of mackerel on Santa Monica pier.  
For years this California of the mind seemed bigger than the mountains valleys beaches and deserts
smarter than the creatures that crawled up out of the Pacific and invented Hollywood
more sophisticated than the gulls and pigeons that picked the beach clean after a summer Sunday 
deeper and more important than all my earlier Californias.
Then one night lolling under a live oak so big it seemed to hold all heaven’s stars in its prickly arms
I finally fell asleep.

A tough old California shook me awake from a dreamless slumber on the edge of a duck pond
shook the great cloud of oak leaves over my head 
until all the sparrows jays and acorn woodpeckers flew away
then told me to follow the trail of a coyote as far as it would take me.
I hauled my bad leg through the riparian wilderness 
following coot feathers vole skulls and shiny black scat
until I stumbled on a family of turkey vultures dining on the carcass of a boar.
Hi Mike they said we’ve been waiting for you, waiting thirty years to tell you about your dying 
which begins today and lasts as long as you can run faster than this pig could.
Say what you have to say I said but I’m not running
and I sat down on a rotting redwood log and waited.
They continued about their boar meal 
and I can tell you turkey vultures love a good boar liver
and they like their boar intestines full of boar shit.
When they were done they flew away on lumbering wings without uttering a peep and
there was nothing left of that boar but some bones and a grinning mouth
but when that mouth started talking I sat up and listened.
Welcome to California Heaven it said home of John Wayne Richard Nixon William Randolph Hearst and Ronald Reagan. 
What about Jack London Cesar Chavez John Muir and my mom I said.
They all went south to Mexico and beyond, it said, all but your late departed bitch of a mother
who’s waiting around for you and making all of us miserable with her unpleasant remarks.
I said I can’t believe the great Californ could be left to the likes of you 
Califia with her thousand miles of jagged coast her immense fertile central valley her grand Sierra her Death Valley of unworldly hues her volcanic north her terrible high deserts her Yosemite
I can’t believe the likes of you should inherit this breathing land whose very name is her shape
her churling waters of Klamath Eel Tuolumne Sacramento Russian Amargosa Colorado 
her Tahoe Clear Lake Mono Lake Goose Lake San Francisco Bay Salton Sea Eagle and Almanor
her birds her insects her mammals her fish her endless outpour of human industry
I just can’t believe it I said.
That’s what your late departed bitch of a mother said it said.
Well when I die I’ll change all that I said.
You are dying it said and once you’re dead there’s not a whole lot you can do about it
so you better get to running before those buzzards come looking for you
and then that mouth belched the most foul stink I’ve ever smelled and I passed out cold.
I woke up on the edge of a duck pond watched the coots and widgeons glide on a mirror of clouds 
until the rain fell and my California told me in raindrop syllables
that my time is not so near, nor is my dear dead mom.

A windy California city nurses me like a pup
nuzzling me off to my job every day and licking my face and butt when I come home.
I sluffle up close to my city’s titty then holler into the wind
ask why in all this immense fertile impossible mysterious generous unkind hopeful land this California
I ended up here.  But she just laughs, my Califia, laughs like a jungle on fire
and says Everybody ends up somewhere, here or somewhere else
and there are no reasons, just stories.
Califia I say you have always been tough on me
yet I’d trade my tongue to stay here with you.
She laughs again and says don’t go and get sappy on me
it aint your style white boy and besides 
lots of lovers have pledged their eternal love to me
then turned around and moved to Boston.
Then she rolls her long young body onto its left side 
spooning behind old man Nevada.
And humming a lullabye to all who care to listen
humming a tune from before the gold rush
she rumbles into sleep, the great Pacific scratching her back 
with curly white fingernails that sound like children’s questions.  
Califia I say you are you have been you are forever you are, you are so—
but my voice trails off into its own slumber in the breath and bosom of
this place this black soil for my heartseed this hothouse of my imagination
this California, my only my always my never my home. 

Michael Pearce’s stories and poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, The Yale Review, Conjunctions, Epoch, Nimrod, The Sun, and elsewhere, and have won some national prizes (New Ohio Review, Dogwood, Oberon, The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Prize in Fiction, and others). His collection of poems, Santa Lucia by Starlight, won the Brighthorse Prize in Poetry and was published by Brighthorse Books in 2023. He has worked as a furniture designer and builder, a university lecturer, and as Director of Cognition Exhibits at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco. He lives in Oakland, California and plays saxophone in the Bay Area band Highwater Blues.