My brash, impolitic, overdeveloped city,
my oil-stained country of three seasons
(you never pretended to have a winter),
my gonzo younger brother who looks stiff
in a white collar (who can blame him?)
and made a fortune selling futures,
my older sister who wears too much makeup
and still looks smart in a pantsuit
(how many times has she been married?),
my mixed neighborhood of Mexican immigrants
and modernist temples (the Menil, the Rothko),
my mystic nights of poetry, oh Houston,
after eighteen years of trying to embrace
your theatrical storms and unforgiving heat,
high ozone, no zoning, strip malls, strip clubs,
I drove away from you on a scorched afternoon
in late summer and haven't looked back since
at your long steaming ribbons of asphalt.
You swell like music in my memory.
I raised a son in you—or tried to—and buried
more than my dead in your baked earth.