Liza Katz Duncan

Love Song: San Diego

Strange that I am still possible, still exist
three thousand miles from home without a bay
to remind me I’m in disaster’s path.
Without floods in spring, storms in summer;
in November, that unpredicted first snow.
San Diego tricks us tourists into thinking it’s the same
season all year: 70 degrees, so bright it’s as if you’re drunk.
All year, sea lions yawn on the promontory.
Bougainvillea burn against low white houses,
their shadows impossibly thick.
But look longer, look closer: everything here
knows its own season.
In early spring, the yellow brittlebrush,
desert lavender. The barrel cactus opens into flower,
then the beavertail, then the Joshua tree and Mojave yucca.
In May and June, El Niño brings the morning rain and fog,
and with them penstemon, jacaranda, larkspur.
Strange that I am possible even here. Here,
a photo: me in the desert, cactus
flower in my hair. See how real I am.

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Liza Katz Duncan is a poet and teacher in New Jersey. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, The Cortland Review, Vinyl, Phoebe, The Journal of New Jersey Poets and elsewhere. She is an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College.