“I wept and screamed until finally I saw the path opened wide before me — freed from the attachment that had caused me suffering. I didn’t need a baby to be happy.”
Marina Muhlfriedel invites us to shed the past, if just a moment.
The voices in Nikki San Pedro’s poems search for soothing in the chaos of L.A.
Three intense, crafted poems, on love for men and words, from C. Russell Price’s acclaimed new debut, TONIGHT, WE FUCK THE TRAILER PARK OUT OF EACH OTHER.
Ridesharing may be an oversaturated market, but as Jonathan Tipton Meyers discovers, drivers and passengers are yearning for the same thing on the streets of Los Angeles: real, human connection.
When writer Matt Powell came back to L.A., he embarked on a noble, dying Angeleno tradition: the backbreaking, exhilarating thrill of driving and resuscitating a classic car. There was one problem — he didn’t know shit about cars.
“We prostitutes were all pretty women. We all had metaphorical thick curls of red hair — a head full of beautiful flourishes — and confidently unconfident smiles.”
“Indie — as in work for free?” I asked, but I didn’t wait for her answer. “You’re going to have to pay your own way back to L.A.”
Beck Black is the frontwoman for her disco-meets-punk-meets-glam-meets surf-meets Goth-meets-Blues-meets rock band at the forefront of the L.A. underground scene.
Los Angeles-based singer and guitarist Lynda Kay’s voice and songs are tethered to a familiar time that is imbued with emotion and style but connected to a place within us that tugs at the heartstrings of a challenging life.
L.A. noir-inspired drama hits Miami streets in Alex Segura’s mystery series. A peek into the world of a down-and-out journalist turned accidental PI, and a Q&A with the author, ARCHIE MEETS RAMONES comics creator by day, crime writer by night.
In his brazen debut novel, Matthew Binder evokes the romance and revulsion of the image of the debaucherous, celebrated author, grasping to make life work off page.
“‘I’m talking to you, zebra.’ His words still reverberate, like sounds bouncing off the steep canyon walls.”
“As the Magic 8 Ball says:
‘All signs point to yes’
That you stole my Klonopin
I’m talking evidence not voodoo.”
“How did I get here? I was standing in a Capitol Records recording studio holding Sinatra’s microphone in my hand. I had dreamed about doing this all my life but I never really thought it would happen.”
William Cass explores a tense familial situation for a divorced couple with kids amid a city propped up on all sides by ennui and detachment, where a character’s drive for a T-ball game and a Creamsicle fogs his own humanity.
“When I pictured New York, I must have envisioned something like Wilshire and Fairfax, only with more people walking around, a shootout in progress and some meatball saying ‘fuggedaboutit’ while my wallet was nicked.”
Karen An-hwei Lee shows us the angels that fly and float through our city. Her assured writing trusts us with the complexities of racism in the judicial system and shows us how far we’ve come and how far we’ll go.
Poetry by Richard King Perkins II evokes the hardship of poverty, the beauty of pleasure and the emptiness of a couple out of sync.
Lydia K. Valentine’s pantoum takes us to the spaces between the spaces.
A personal piece inspired by the words and people that do not exist in Confucius’ Analects.
“No sunscreen. No seat belts. No helmets, knee pads, cell phones or parents. Just free-wheelin’ with nary a care in the world.”
“Now here she stood, on a balcony overlooking Adams Boulevard at a party on a warm Thursday night in June. If her flight hadn’t been delayed she would already be halfway around the world.” LAX to India.
“At 4:15 a.m., January 17, 1994, I was asleep in my bed. At 4:20 a.m., I was awake, terrified and confused about how I had ended up feet from my bed on the floor of my closet.”
Ed Ahearn on a child’s wish to fly, and a man’s knowledge of being tethered to earth, for now.
Rachel Toles’ poetry reaches beyond obligations of intimacy.
Mike Sonksen, aka Mike the Poet, tunes into the heartbeat and history of Los Angeles.
“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.”
Ruth Nolan shows us the layers of our lives and our loves in a roadtrip across the ocean of the desert.
“The priest rushed out of the entrance and raised both of his hands to the sky. He was a swan flapping its wings as his long white robe dangled from his hairy forearms. A group of old women pointed judgmental fingers at Raphael’s car.”
“The religion of the bus is superior to many others since its devotees, unlike those of other belief systems, are almost always rewarded, eventually. Even in Los Angeles, a bus does come.”
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.”
Wire and Vaudeville by Andrea Lambert
L.A.-based writer and artist Andrea Lambert escorts us inside her edgy, sexy and personal oil and assemblage series.
“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.”
The Fringe by Grant Palmer
Grant Palmer points his camera at L.A.’s communities of diversity and culture, and that keeps him on the fringes and edges of the city – all the places “that make life really, really interesting.”
“Couple of mothers, aren’t we?
Just look at us,
still breathing strong,
when we swore there wasn’t a chance.”
“On the one hand, there was always New York, the place that says, ‘Do I look like I’m off duty to you, pal?… I don’t see your name on the list … Why are you wearing pastels?’ On the other, there was always California, the place that is just there, doesn’t particularly care if you are, but when you arrive, lies on its back and says, ‘Hello, may I help you?'”
“My son starts doing the cooking. He serves me a hot banana-nut muffin with cinnamon, butter and brown sugar melted inside, and I start to regain my appetite. I begin to see a glimmer. While this isn’t the life I had planned, it could work.”
Welcome to Angels Flight • literary west and our “love/hate” debut issue. We hope you love it!
“I realized I was surviving on isolation, wounded and harboring, and that that does not make for very good love. Sometime after the bridge, I began to realize that I already knew everything I needed to know.”