Kim Loshe

So Much More is Happening in Palm Springs These Days, But This is L.A.

Night is a sack stuffed with bones and glass.  Smell of tar
and coconut oil, like Channel 5 all over Paris.  Taste of
the bottled water dissolving vitamin pills—sky the color of
blue weight.   Drone of freeway and planes.

Scent of being lost—a woman, too small in her saggy skin,
color of a football, whites of her eyes browned
under her fried hair, under her neon pink
baseball cap, over the halter top and yoga pants.
Rollerblades to work,
a smoothie bar.  Aren’t all women aged
against their wills?

Except Carla, who also has brown skin, but
just feels old at La Paz taqueria on Wiltshire Blvd.
If the surf’s up, the mountains will bite down
to steady themselves against the traffic to the shore.
But, the mountains have not bitten down
and the surf has never really been up.  If a big wave
came in, it would wipe out everything.  Gaudy, La Brea
Saber-toothed Tigers who once prowled Rodeo
Drive gone missing to excerpts on CA standardized tests,
along with the Spanish missions.

A surfboard is a raft against this current.

Carla wraps her last foiled burrito and takes
a sledgehammer to the family restaurant.  A small
earthquake the rest of the valley misses.  Glass will land, once
the night is ripped far enough open.  Mud consumes PCH
winterly, but it should swallow the urgent care center
across from Peperdine U., which mostly does Botox treatments.

The basin taken into the faults—”Ay dios mio—hay no esta paz.”

Flowers will stretch and yawn, the glass glittering
on their cheekbones as they start their yoga in the desert sage.
A star will slide through the night and the sun
will step back off the land.  The city will finally be cool.