Monday, August 16, 2021

PRATIK DOUBLE LA ISSUE SPECIAL : AMERICAN POET SUZANNE LUMMIS' POEM, "Bossing Los Angeles:

 

SUZANNE LUMMIS

Bossing Los Angeles

 


Don’t move east, Quake Queen—

           not even a couple feet. Don’t slide

 

open in daylight, in public places.  Strike

           a bargain with Earth—hey,

                    you know to close deals.      

 

L.A., comfort our stalled careers. Budge faster

our 6 p.m. autos stuck to the One-O-One.

 

On the Eastside keep secret your secret

          places and byways—staircase

                    of tiles and crushed shells,

Chicken Boy.

 

Don’t let the Westsiders know. 

 

Water

             your stub-toed river a bit,

Hard-to-Drown-In-River.

 

Write your own poem, Big Girl,

without using the word

dreams.

See?  Impossible, even for me.

 

Do that thing you do

          at night—let your erased past

ghost dance down your strip 

 

of boulevard, Sunset, stretch

          of street that began beyond your city

limits, anyone’s

 

limits, given to vice and mobster

          crime. Now? Argon, Helium, Xenon.

                    Neon.                                               

 

If blood could shine, if light

could bleed, it would be Neon,

 

          or it would be L.A.

 

Suzanne Lummis was a 2018/19 COLA (City of Los Angeles) fellow, an endowment from the Cultural Affairs Department to distinguished mid-career artists or poets to create a new body of work. She has poems forthcoming in Luvina (U. of Guadalajara), and Saw Palm, a special issue on Florida Noir. Poetry.la produces her web series on film noir and poets influenced by that style and sensibility, They Write by Night.  


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