Lamentation
1. Starved Ghoul
Without the usual comfort of rain at night, the downpour sucks dust as drops slam the window. Highly textured ice cream healing by the mouthful, chunky sugar sugar sugar while the cathedral bells bleat across a 600-foot radius. A day off for an Abrahamic faith. Repentance last longer than sin. Back-to-back text messages left unread. Not harassment, just concern. I keep telling you to leave me alone but here you come singing that song against the door of my heart.
2. But This Isn’t How You Cope
Dining area closed so attempting to walk through the drive through of the Jack in the Box on Crenshaw. I want fries and lemonade, how ‘bout you? I don’t know man I don’t know. Maybe I’m overstimulated in LA. Maybe I’ll just give everything up and start over somewhere quiet and boring. “See that’s what I mean,” Laz said when I told her, “Always that ‘starting over’ talk. You don’t even drink anymore and you’re still thinking up stupid shit like that.”
3. Latitude
Ease up a little. Not everyone wants to ascend. And not everybody likes hell. As neurotic as a gallon Ziploc bag filled with a month’s worth of receipts. Traffic is always halted and the block is radiating with dayglow hallucinogenic screams. And they wonder why I’m afraid of becoming a shut-in. Overdraft fee after overdraft fee, but I’m still after class mobility. My ex-girl said it best. “When are you finally gonna buy something not from Goodwill?”
4. On the Road
Thank goodness a neighbor is a friend. Tia and I strap on our roller skates and take over the high school parking lot. Oh, here’s the jungle. 29° centigrade, postmortem fan palms. Take a spin about and pray for skinned knees. Hey, be cool, think of what it took to get here. Each approaching kilometer was a test, drawing a blade along the skin of the land. Utah looked like outer space after you and I laughed at the Kum & Go’s dotting Nebraska. But it was surviving Death Valley with no SPF or water, crossing the Nevada-California border that let me know: with all this distance, things were never going to work out.
Chekwube Danladi is the author of Semiotics (University of Georgia Press, 2020), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She is the Writer-in-Residence at Occidental College and lives in Los Angeles.