A Room in California
By Ari Banias

Decade of red carpeting dark as pomegranate.
Gone pale, a splotchy pink
by the curtainless window where
the sun blows its blinding rectangle across
the floor. Traces of dust,
shapes of once:
a sunken couch shouldered the blue
wall, a crimson corner and its four
small depressions like nests:
the legs of a ghost
desk. The walls puckered, pinholes stake
the blank expanse where a large map
of a small island hung.
The forest of the island is burning.
Trees shrunk to dark
jagged stumps.

The sky in the window
ripples, an ocean