Release: Offcourse #60, 100th issue!

offcourse@albany.edu

Offcourse, a very special literary journal, has released its 100th issue (#60).  I very much recommend it.  Below is a poem of mine from issue 59.  The title is “Closer” (as in ‘to close’ a deal).  It is one of my latest meditations on Los Angeles.  

Owl

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Closer

sunset baked the folk, millions of them,

all flavored different the same.

AC’s whirred on volt-bound coal,

while the swelter of lets and sublets

played on.

jetliners

owned the decibel extremes,

but in a corner of the emulsified sky

a pair of hawks tread.

after they funneled off,

flies in the amphitheaters of kitchens had to do,

or disaporic house spiders,

steadfast in lank mezzanines.

(no one counted

the machinelike ants

migrated from scalded dirt

to cool cornucopic parlors.)

crows whittled the sun away,

such tired and cranky switch-wing punks.

Fibonacci throngs of them, congealing,

superimposed a whirlpool

over the effluence

of this brake-light time.

the city wasn’t

supposed to be about swerving birds,

or even the trudging phlegm of cars.

faces hung inside

like fruity cyborgs:

orange, grim, and cherry splashes

across the herded glass

of spectral visors.

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