The trunk of this avocado tree is pinkwhen dipped in the light of Los Angeles, redwhen chillin’ in modernity.Underneath the apartment complexthere are layers of being: the sea, her empty shells,plastic Easter grass, concrete, one canvas tennis shoe,the spit of snails. A man buys a bouquet of daffodils for his wife hoping she’ll have sexwith him. It might work. You can hear her unwrap the cellophane, open the packet of powdery food, put the flowersin the vase, while the middle-school-girl next door puts togethera PowerPoint on Anasazi Indians. She just wants a B. Someone in this dump’s always playing the drums. Pueblos. We spend our entire lives cleaning up.____Sandra Simonds is the author of Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012) and Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2009). She is Assistant Professor of English at Thomas University in Thomasville, Georgia. Visit her at sandrasimonds.wordpress.com.