Want

You know you want one.  

You know you want one.   

You know you want one.  

You know you want a burger and fries 

and to dip your fries into your vanilla chip milkshake 

while listening to Echo and the Bunnymen

so loud that you can't hear your mom 

yammering about her boss 

and her friends

and the way you never do your chores.

Measure by measure

Drop by drop

and pound for pound

you want to run really fast to the beach 

when it's foggy and no one can see you smoking.

you're a ghost.

a beach ghost.

you are the ghost of summer past.

you slip into the fog and you are 

nothing but the scent of coppertone 

the taste of lemonheads

the feeling of bikini strap behind you neck

crafting you into ladyhood one knot at a time

there was a girl named jenny

there was always a girl named jenny

this jenny was nice to you until she realized you were just somebody's

GIRLFRIEND

then she ignored you

good feminist that she was.

You know you want one.  

You know you want one.   

You know you want one. 

Pico Bumps Up

1984

Half of me, straight down the center line of my body, was covered in rubbery, white bumps.  I had to claw them off of my face and out of my hair.  The bumps got under my fingernails.  It was like being covered in whatever it is that's used to make those sparkly, cottage cheese ceilings you see in apartments build in 1960's Los Angeles.  The kind that are mint colored and boxy with names like Capri Arms, Shangrila, and Pico Manor.  It was a terrible dream.  Like being in a cocoon made of cheese.

2000

I was going up the elevator in the Westside Pavilion and I got grease on my pants from the escalator.  I bumped into a woman and she gave me this knowing look in slow motion. Then I swam home down Pico Boulevard.  It was a giant waterway with lanes for swimming not traffic.  I stood up near the car wash across from Rancho Park.  I wasn't wearing a bathing suit.  Should I turn back, I thought.  Or do I keep moving forward?

1997

An old man licked my face.  I could feel the bumps on his tongue and smell his breath.  Woke me up in a panic.

1978

I was a bride wearing cowboy boots, following a train track.  There were snakes at my feet.  I could see my face and I was a grown up.

1997

I was on the beach and out of the ocean, came a giant, succulent the size of a skyscraper.  It was a tongue, a tendril, a tail, a tentacle.  I'm not sure.  It came out of the ocean and bam, bam, bam - flopped back and forth, destroying everything it touched.  I wasn't scared.  Everything behind me was ruined as I walked away, and the sky was bright red.