So I continue to be stripped weekly. Robbed of my spaces.
The road continues to narrow and narrow and narrow.
I understand, I wish to say hello to all the many energies.
All is bone-walls and flesh. I just want to be left alone at night
To wander the hallways of my childhood home in Mar Vista.
I remember that right turn one made toward the living room.
Orange carpet which was beige. My ex-wife came to get me once,
How old was she? Thirteen? She talked to my mother. I wasn’t there.
Now we talk to one another like we have never really met.
I’ve decided to drive much slower and with the traffic instead
Of through it. And I recall that old ride at Disneyland where
You got to drive little cars on a little network of highways.
You couldn’t go too fast. It wouldn’t let you. You couldn’t pass.
The air was thick with the scent of milkshakes and firework smoke.
That’s not what life is. Does anyone own goldfish anymore?
Does anyone walk beneath yellow streetlights along dirty walls?
That’s what I want these days. The smell of bus exhaust.
But the clean floors of my career won’t let me. I can lick them
They’re so pristine. I remember being interviewed once
By the English Chair of a prestigious high school in Pasadena.
Her office was a small library with a Sigmund Freud couch.
She asked me about obscure novels. We talked about literature
As though we were in a Parisian salon. Outside, the teenagers
Threw gum at each other, full water bottles at windows.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore. I’m a man
Without means. Without prospects. At age fifty, that’s lethal.
In my youth, my hands were made of metal. Now they’re puddy.
I go back over the last five years and cringe. Ever do that?
Yet something still haunts the distant trees in the hazy afternoon.
Something still taps the shoulder just before opening the front door.
Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, “My Earthbound Eye,” was published in September 2013 upon winning the 2012 Sacramento Poetry Center Award. He received a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis. Alejandro works as an English teacher, having taught at the secondary level for many years. Originally from Argentina, he immigrated to California at an early age. A new collection, “The Book of the Unclaimed Dead,” published by Main Street Rag Press, is now available on the MSR website. Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his dog, a feisty terrier named Jake.