Los Angeles
L.A. is knotted concrete, buttressed slopes built for escape.
Prone to car sickness, riding into town was a vertiginous contradiction,
like bobbing upstream in a mad barrel.
Along one of these freeways was a painted mosaic of Christ on a bank building,
a morbid, pastel likeness that loomed, pixilated, over reams of softened asphalt.
For two miles staring at it would ease my nausea.
But inevitably we would park and I would alight and vomit, arm around
a fire hydrant, wishing there were decent dentists, doctors,
lawyers and notary publics closer to our barrio, and a flatter way home.
Then as the Buick wagon lumbered and swayed again beneath that benevolent,
somewhat cross-eyed stare, my throat raw and coppery, I’d try and put together
what that extended hand was doing, what the figure’s
cubic, indecipherable tangle of digits was trying to sign, where its tiles pointed,
which side it welcomed, guarded, whether it waved us in or out,
or if He needed a ride.
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