indie – inclusive – alta
DTLA I am the heart. My alleys filled with rats and love- letters written with aerosol paint. My mornings are anxiety. I let the homeless mingle with elites and at 5 PM, I vomit onto freeways. I dress up my history for visitors, putting on costumes for tourists–speaking a little Spanish, serving them sushi. I … Read more
POEM IN WHICH I CANNOT TALK ABOUT MY DISABILITY Back to reality, I halve into the art museum. There’s barely anyone inside, just a group of girls flirting with Donatello’s David, the earlier version. I model myself into a bronze statue, the kinds that lurk in the corner and scrutinize without being scrutinized. Girls, only … Read more
JUSTICE VISION Justice This word rings like wedding bands around the fingers of our morality We carry its conviction like thunder in our pockets Waiting for the world’s villains to catch us defenseless in a dark alley Anticipating an easy snack We wait for wrong to happen That we may loose justice from our skin … Read more
UNHOLY CITY OF ANGLES rectangle eyes stare: their dilated fluorescent pupils stacked like shelves; black lines like skinny arms stretch from pole to pole, shuttling electricity, crisscrossing woolly smog & cotton clouds. around the corner, purple petals surprise like new hair color on an old friend; palm tree silhouettes wave to you or the sun, … Read more
PETERS CANYON, MARCH 2020 I’ve walked this canyon for 25 years. Water once filled the reservoir irrigated citrus orchards attracted birds: Tri-colored blackbirds with vibrant orange stripes, hummingbirds, egrets and herons, hawks and the occasional eagle, migratory ducks and geese. In March, 1995, a naturalist pointed out a Western Blue Jay. Through binoculars I saw … Read more
DISAPPOINTMENT AT 9 A.M. after Wallace Stevens’ “Disillusionment at Ten O’Clock” The H.O.V. lane is moving again. No one sees what I see, but I see a thing or two that’s not true about the people in the cars merging to inch past and past. Not one of them listens to old sailors on the … Read more
LOVE POEM FOR TRADE #2 I wish you would call me a bitch and take me over your knee but I’m too shy to ask. I bring my dad up in conversation a little too often. When you pulled out a crackpipe I warned you I was impressionable. You laughed at me and the gaps … Read more