“Sometimes you don’t have the touch.
Now the best tenderness is whatever you try
when it’s not enough to say how could you have known.”
Category Archive: DEPARTMENTS
Ruth Nolan shows us the layers of our lives and our loves in a roadtrip across the ocean of the desert.
The prose poetry of Andy Lara captures the sights and sounds of the City of Angels, from the buoyant energy of schoolkids to the shuffle of homeless street scavengers.
“When some air’s displaced, other air rushes in. Does one soul’s absence make room for another?”
“‘Stanzi. You should know who you are,’ he said.
I shook my head, though he was right. But who was I? I held out my hands and pleaded with my eyes.”
Brad Rose shows us to the dark of night and dark of soul in the corners and outskirts of our city. His audio recordings of his readings lend a gritty, raw intimacy to his words.
“Dearest L.A., with your light and your wings, shadow-love of my life. I’ll always be back, Los Angeles. Because now I know: ‘You like me, you really like me!'”
“Someday, I’ll return to the land of hiking and green juice, but until then it will remain the ex-lover I left because of bad timing.”
“I would like to light a lantern and watch it float off into the night sky — leading the spirits safely to their homes. I would like to see the ceremonial dance.”
“I get impatient for the pill to kick in, because this bitch is growing, it’s blossoming. Xanax is next. Two hours later, I pop another. It’s time for ER. And not the one on TV. My brain is about to explode.”
“Cells beget cells
extending into light
drinking photons with the rest
as sugars accumulate
at the ends of buds
ideas rolling into acts
full fruition”
“I’m a hot flash, molten gold
drawing your eye up
from poor and rocky soil
to my perky chocolate brown cones
call me gloriosa daisy
but don’t compare me to
that pale cousin of mine
prey of ambivalent lovers”
“The full moon will slip off my shoes.
The longest day of the year will give way.
You nuzzle my nape under luminescence.
You ran your finger along my forehead,
tucked my bangs behind my ear.
Gravity is a force that draws two bodies.
The axis is about to shift.”
“Los Angeles doesn’t demand your love.
If you don’t understand her, she’ll bow her
head, say ‘Namaste,’ and she’ll rise above.
Not everyone gets her, she’s not bitter.”
“Couple of mothers, aren’t we?
Just look at us,
still breathing strong,
when we swore there wasn’t a chance.”
Author Wendy C. Ortiz gives a visceral exploration of love, loss and transformation in the hills and streets of L.A. in an excerpt of “Hollywood Notebook,” a memoir of her 20s and 30s coming-of-age in Los Angeles.
“Hiram ‘Doc’ Hollywood had come to California from the Topeka World’s Fair of ’88 to build a dream factory that would bear his name. But dreams were a rough business. In his years of efforts he could never figure out the formula to get the dreams into the heads of the sleeping people (something his protege Leonardo ‘Leo’ DiCaprio would one day do), and when the dream market took a beating in the Panic of ’96, Doc Hollywood switched to movies.”
A fast-moving excerpt from Shanna Mahin’s acclaimed debut novel, tracing the ups and downs of Jess, third-generation Hollywood trouble.
“My little terrier mutt is quintessentially L.A. This is not to say that she’s an item I throw in a $1,500 handbag when she matches my ensemble, but she was born here and by the end of her first year she had already left home and walked more L.A. streets than Charlie Sheen’s last ‘girlfriend.'”
In Rachel Sona Reed’s meditation on history and loss, a neighborhood’s wartime homes are stripped to their bones.
Every woman knows the memories and meaning that a dress can carry. Saryn Chorney’s poem gathers those ethereal, delicate threads.
Author Joel Harper pens a beautiful allegory about preparing those we love to deal with the adversities of life, and then letting go.
Songs that remind her of Los Angeles filter through a survivor’s reflection on her life and connection to the city.
Two poems on the possibilities of rebirth and motherhood.
“Dear Los Angeles: You are not perfect. But I love you. I’m, like, super-into-you.” A Valentine’s Day love letter to L.A. from our debut “love/hate” issue by comedian, author and Brooklyn transplant Sara Benincasa.