Simon Smith
From ZEROFOURZEROFIVEZEROSIXTWENTYTWELVE
Friday, Thirteenth
I write today's poem tomorrow
stolen from yesterday's memory:
gophers, small lizards, no sign
of rattlesnakes, coyotes or kingsnakes
but I know they're there
various familiar unidentified cacti
just flowering pinks, yellows, reds more-than-alive
in expectation of a Spring downpour
a pair of hawks rising at Split Rock
Gram Parsons' 'Love Hurts' on the iPhone
a head full of UFOs & LSD
dead at Joshua Tree
nineteenth September nineteen seventy-three
through rainstorms on eye ten & eye one ten
flashing back: unexpected exploding pick-up on I-60
haul across the desert
we occupy THE INNER EMPIRE K-CAL 9 Weather informs us
with a chance of snow above 5,500 feet & storms after midday with rainfall
of one to two inches
then home for Guy's pasta & conversation
a couple of fine pale ales, a good red wine
04/14/12
Cruising down Vista del Mar
Guy at the wheel of his scarlet-immaculate '88 Mercedes 560 SL coupe
the dream car of dreams glides by as long as a freeway
English boy's dream
come true past Manhattan Beach towards Hermosa
via Hyperion Way & the oil refinery
a stroll on the pier & a pair of smoothies
'one banana & pineapple (with apple juice) for this man
one strawberry (with soya milk) for this man, please,'
& 'which way to Hawaii,' we ask the pilot
04/17/12
Trip to Bank of America on San Vicente
$200 from the ATM, then down Barrington
right at Olympic
Trader Joe's for groceries
pick a Zinfandel from the Alexander Valley for later, my choice simply
the name: Rendition
Later still: cross Sunset to the Angelino
rise to the 17th Floor, meet
Flick & Toby for cocktails
gazing across I-405 I drive through air
to the horizon & the 'off'
ramp reaching out the Ocean
04/19/12
fill the tank with $40 of regular on Sepulveda
meeting Flick off the monorail at The Getty
then down to La Jolla two & a half hours of Interstate
405 merging right into I-5
Rest Area ‘under construction’
to arise on the terrace at Ellentown Road
sipping martini facing a chilly westerly
off the endless Pacific
one late afternoon hang-glider
rises from the headland
day-glo yellow sail
mistaken for picnic table canopy
then three more monstrous
off the sandstone cliffs
scoops of ice-cream, pistachio,
strawberry, orange sorbet then a fourth
& a red-shouldered hawk or peregrine
surfers freeze Black’s Beach
below a sky broadening a bluer blue
POEM WITH A LINE ALTERED FROM A TRANSLATION BY PAUL BLACKBURN
built on a Yuman burial site
Cherokee, Warrior, Raptor – a drive full
white pick ups – Trader Joe, GI
Joe, ‘leez-ur’-time-Joe
Horizon Way leads to Ellentown Road
sandstone or sand
prone to unstable slippage bones
& skulls with each landslide
the burials flexed
crouching to return
to where they were the seventeen
exhumations 2,000 years at least
one skull carbon-dated
6,700 years in the sand
then stone
a healthy diet of seafood & land vegetation
two week cliff inspections by Coastguard chopper
searching for the signs
& how the rich conduct
their business in our heads
North Star straight flood through the plate glass & memory
of the last meal, a six inch Subway – ham, Swiss cheese, pickle, mustard, mayo
at the gate a sacred place & the last
STOP sign before Japan
Copyright Simon Smith 2015
Simon Smith is senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Kent. His fifth full-length collection of poetry, 11781 W. Sunset Boulevard,
was published by Shearsman Books in January 2014. Essays on his work have appeared at The Fortnightly Review and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He can be seen here performing new poems at the Runnymede Literature Festival in March 2013. His work appeared previously in Molly Bloom 2.
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