Los Angeles

Original assignment, from September 2007: write a poem about a place you have never visited, using intimate detail to show that the speaker knows the place.  This is the edited version, after it was put through a workshop.

Los Angeles
I wanted to go out,
to cruise down Sunset with the top of your car down,
past silicone shopping malls and mannequin girls,
waving my feet in gold mules out the window.

I wanted to go to the beach
and watch the surfers and the sunbathers,
slice into the salty water
and eat melon on the boardwalk.

I wanted to slam with punks and college kids,
wearing our leather jackets and striped shirts,
drink a bit too much cheap beer at the bar,
get burritos so we could fall asleep.

But you were dreaming of going home again,
to an island built up like a fortress,
stacked up and nervous,
where you can’t even see the water.

You couldn’t remember Gene Kelly’s feet in cement.
You forgot about parrots perched in jacaranda trees.
You just saw the smog and the money,
zombie movie stars under our feet,
gangsters done up like blue and red clowns,
trees burning down in the Santa Ana winds.

I wanted you to stay here
in a city of canyons and palm trees,
open roads and secret alleyways,
mirrored pools and sunsets and happy endings.
You just smiled bittersweet and said
you didn’t believe in angels.

New assignment: take a poem that involves a person other than the speaker and write a poem about the same event from the other person’s perspective.

Los Angeles
Emily, I wish you would come back to me.
Leave the Pacific Ocean,
wash the salt out of your eyelashes.
Let me wrap the Hudson River
around your bare, tanned arms.

This city can only poison you with
oleander and silicone,
smog and Crip cocaine.
And you know, they lied to you, Emily,
because none of the feathers on the beach
belong to any angels.

But Manhattan doesn’t play pretend;
it knows the rain as well as the sun.
You’d love it there, Emily:
the snow and the subway,
Chinatown and Central Park,
three-chord Bowery sonatas.

So close the picture book, Emily;
you know angels don’t really exist,
except for the statues in Forest Lawn Cemetery
for the ones who couldn’t survive.
Leave the canyons of failed dreams,
chemical sunsets and acid blue pools.
You’ll only suffocate, Emily.
Come back to me.

Writing Challenges: November

This month’s writing challenges to myself:

• Not NaNoWriMo.

Theme:

• a happy poem.
• race
• gender
• darkness, without cliché.

Structure:

• villanelle
• title first, poem second
• mimic other poets
• don’t use “you” or “I”

Rewrite/Rework:

• “Seeds” (November 2006)
• “Motel” (November 2006)
• “Inheritance” (September 2007)
• “Paul Banks” (October 2007)
• “Liam Ross” (November 2007)

Moving In

Assignment: Write in third person from the viewpoint of someone under 10 years old doing something completely new to him/her, focusing on sensory detail to overcome the difference in vocabulary (cf. Clark Blaise, “Broward Dowdy”).

Allie’s aunt Clara was a tower of a woman in a slim taupe pantsuit, with brown hair cut in a neat, severe bob. She had to lean forward a bit in order to fit her door frame. Aside from her long, narrow nose, she looked nothing like Allie’s mother, her sister, who always wore her long hair down and hated wearing shoes.

Upon seeing the two of them in her doorway, Clara did not smile, but looked them up and down in a brisk nod. Allie looked up at her warily and took a bite of the sandwich her mother had given her in the car.

“Well, girls. Won’t you come in?” Clara’s voice was deep and low, not like Allie’s mother’s at all. Allie tightened her grip on her mother’s hand as Clara leaned down and took the small brown suitcase that sat at Allie’s feet, then turned around and went inside. Allie’s mother tugged on her hand and led her into the house.

Inside, the house was as enormous as it was outside. Allie supposed it had to be, in order to accommodate Clara’s height. It was draughty and smelled like nothing, except for the conspicuous aura of her house that still clung to Allie’s coat and her mother’s sweater. The foyer was rectangular, with one doorway on each side leading to another room. The room was empty except for a round, dark wood table with a thin plaster statue standing atop it, and a long, narrow painting of a yellow field of wheat that hung on the back wall. In the corner, a tall, spiralling wooden staircase went up through the ceiling to the next floor. The walls were marbled white and looked smooth, but Allie did not rush to touch them – the whole place felt precariously arranged, as if one touch would send it crashing to the ground.

“Would you like something to drink?” came Clara’s voice from the next room. It sounded faint in the silence that overpowered the house.

Allie’s mother let go of her hand and walked away, but Allie did not follow her. She stared up at the staircase, at the steep wooden stairs that led to nothing and the rails that looked like polished bones. She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed it slowly. It was bologna and mustard, her favourite. It was the only thing that felt anything like home right now.