After we leave, me and the photographer,
cramped in my car, talk how it must be like
to live to be ninety. How free and young
we are to zigzag the curves of Laurel Canyon
near bullet-speed, windshield wipers
screeching in rare California rain.
(originally published in Open: A Journal of Art & Letters, Winter 2022)
Blackbirds suspended in triumvirate.
Clouds in a sea of burnt clay
mold into a blanket, the bed
unmade. Every beautiful sunset,
look:
see the others on their phones
snap photos for strangers,
likers, digital lovers.
Lowball grandeur on a
five-inch screen.
It’s gone in a moment, anyway,
the pixelation of life,
bloated
and trapped
and yours.
Palm trees stand as windmills,
stilled, and they cannot fan
the vertical Culver sign,
risen like held smog.
Headlights on cars move
indistinguishably in time-lapse circles,
one after the other after the other.
(originally published in The Literary Commune – Issue #4, April 2015)