By Megan Fernandes
In midsummer, in Los Angeles,
the night is fractured
with mountains, grilling ink
into the blue thaw. I trail
into pools and pastures,
and in the diner,
tattoos speck
and skirt up booths,
the waitress, Dottie, is whipping
shells, mac and cheese,
waffles and chickens,
all oracles in the oil.
You think I’m kidding? Look
at Hopper’s orange rooms,
his lone man. Vineyards
are boring to paint,
the coffee rumbling us all
into a primal scene, the mismatched
silverware like guns in a Western,
all the possibilities
of a warm night.
The thing about LA is
anyone can walk through
the door. The drunk drive, the
open-air and clipping down
Highland Avenue. Here are all the streets
I remember: Alvarado and Effie.
Mohawk and Montana. Before
all this? The hills of Carpinteria,
cattle punk, the drained floodplains
and eucharistic jimson weed.
But dig that ditch city,
those impersonal stones,
the great vigilance
of the 19th century,
the circus of eggs on the plate,
Dottie full of lips, just lips
sipping, stinging the sandy air.
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The sun came out on Thursday! I had a bunch of work to do in the morning and wasted too much time trying to create a mobile version of my web site -- too complicated -- but in the afternoon, after Adam got back from lunch with my mother and Paul got finished with work, we picked up Christine and went to Great Falls. The goslings were hiding, but we saw geese, turtles, frogs, broadhead and five-lined skinks, great blue herons, cardinals, and two kinds of snakes!
We all went to California Tortilla for dinner -- I wanted to try the new Mediterranean Bowl while it lasts since CalTort has a habit of discontinuing all of my favorites as soon as I discover them -- then we came back to our house, where I watched the Voyager episode I need to review ("Coda" and it's all downhill from here) and, since Christine had never seen it, we all watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I love that movie and it's interesting watching this Steve again after Civil War.
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