Seven

Liar screams face in mirror,
hand around own self's throat,
tight like rope burns,
throttle harder
for the love
of God,
please.

Eric

I didn't trust you

when 

I first met you,

you slammed poems

cleanly and clearly

and under control.

You told me to try

to do the same

and I would later

find you in a room

of other poets

and we'd sit by

each other and joke

and nerd out

over the creations

of Lucas, Whedon,

Kane and Lee.

You encouraged

my vulgarity at times

and to you, I pledge

thousands of cat slits

in the after life.

Eli

We climbed Masada,

ate Schwarma

on Ben Yehuda,

and slid

out of an elephant's ass

in Tel Aviv.

We came back to the States,

I randomly went to a party

at a frat house by UCLA

and saw you there

then years later, you'd

start to frequent some

of my events and invite

me up to your farm

out in BFE for Shabbat

dinner and eventually,

I'll take you up

on that offer.

John Ramirez Plays Bass

with stoned koalas in the land

of the first In 'N Out

he bides his time, working

in Japanese restaurants

he travels at warp speed

with his amiable pals

Bob, the bearded lovable

and long haired faux cholo

Odie, the man who is not

Garfield's dog nemesis

together, they ingest

libations and pizza

They engage in aural sex

with others like me

and they're like really,

really good at it.

Kevin O'Bry Bry

The fly guy, a person of interest

in my quest to attest all

these kinds on my chest. Hair

like Michael Richards

if he were to play Lynch's

Eraserhead and a brain

like Carville, he is a prize

worth being won, ladies. So

step right up and meet the man,

the myth, the legend

and the sheer joyous charisma

of his will distend and disengage

to feel your face like the fingers

of a blind man to know the real you.

Nikol

A sea of young faces, some quizzical

and some interested and some not,

I was in a room of them as I had

been invited to read to them

like a vulgar, bearded kindergarten

teacher.

To my right, you sat and it wasn't

'til later that I understood that

we were connected through mutual

friends and you were, in fact,

marrying one of them. It's

a small world after all, it's

a small world after all, it's

a small world after all.

Matt

Japanese American San Diegan

wielder of the sharpest of sharp

rapier wits, amazed you don't

need a license for the thing.

You're the tender and inventor

of beauteous legs and manicured

toes that hang and grow

from a ceiling

and you should be adored for it.

Andrew

Sat in a classroom, Torrance

there to get away from Pedro

there because that's what

grades dictate.

English, my favorite subject

desperation sandwich

was looking for ingredients

was looking for band mates

and you shred.

Scott

Faux-hawks and Harley boots,

hardcore shows and homoeroticism

superheroes and car accidents

teachers we be of a shared existence

a kindred reality, with loving girls

on our arms-- but you almost c-blocked

me from getting mine.

Liza

Digitized and pixelated

in a picture, the only

one of us together

taken from the now

commonplace upward angle

of one of us holding

the camera.

You wore a ball cap

like you always did

and I ridiculous

facial hair.

It was the day after

a late 20's birthday

of mine, some time

before or after

I gave you the hat

of a witch

and we held each

other awkardly

lingering perhaps

too long

and then…

You were married.

Angel

Bandana wearing

tattooed, fish slangin' duder

nights spent in a van

Gina

Bellingham baby, Maui transplant

leaving sun for heavy rain and snow

You line your eyes with Bachalo's ink

and have a room at Choir Girl Hotel

Thousands of miles apart, we were friends

in high school. Etching Corgan and Reznor

lines into the margins of spiral notebooks,

looking at people on stage saying,

hey, I wanna do that.

Maybe we'll meet someday.

Rosie

Pretty faced Wilmas ruca

bespeckled English majors

unite

you said "ass play" once

on Facebook and you'd

of thought that I had

an asthma attack

with how hard I laughed.

Mac

I'd admire your toes

when you wore flip-flops

because they were long

because they were thin

You'd place your feet up

on the back of chairs

on the backs of desks

toasty brown digits

simian, finger-like,

slender like you

the gymnast, now a mother

all grown up and shit 

You'll still be the girl

who wrote poems about

fucking & meatloaf sandwiches, who

drew the Bat Signal on everything.

Akiko

Japanese Lady

friends with Kana and Karen

wondrous glasses, good laugh

Omar ZahZah

is an opera,
an orchestra,
a fiery plume,
a sharp dagger
in the hot hands
of a winged chimp
with a bloodlust.

Lustrous four eyes,
raven haired god
among lesser
gods, damn, God damn.

Mimi

Tears streak a sallow yet porcelain visage
in the passenger seat of a car
in an industrial part of town
on a side street near a punk rock bar,
the others are waiting but the owner
of the face doles out truth, doles out
the story of how a now ex-love
lacked common human decency
and the ears in the driver’s seat
listened and wondered if they were
any different than the cad
in the story and wondered,
bewildered as to how anyone
could hurt something so pretty.

Buckley

My high school friend has been following me
post-diplomas through junior college
and unto the travails of a transfer student
into the same university, when I’m doing
my MFA then she’s finishing up her undergrad.
She calls me to tell me that a grad student
is teaching her fiction workshop. She says
that he’s hot. She asks if I know him
and I say yes, he’s the master of miniature men.

Joel Barber

Stoic man, back of the class
back row sitter
deceptive quiet
how many haircut jokes
have you heard
in your life?

Katie

I wanted to shock you
I had heard about you
from the mouths
of Mac and Matt
about how clever you
were and how keen
they were on you
So I said something
borderline racist
about the benefits
of dating Asian women
and how one was
how their smaller stature
meant petite vaginas, which
meant also having the illusion
that your penis was bigger.

I’m shocked you even still talk to me.

Alexandra

Brown hair, brown eyes, olive skin, 

last name means dispute in Sicilian,

Katy Perry blue hair, whip cream can 

titty holsters Halloween costume. Drunk 

girl in infamous Facebook photo 

amongst our mutual friends, saw you 

near Chinatown with a skinny giant 

of a young man who I had class

with once. You two, cute together,

just friends or something more?

Only you and the Cap’n can make

it happen. My gf thinks you’re nice,

stop making cameos and walk-ons.

Be more of a semi-permanent

fixture in the day-to-day

mezzanine that we call life,

“electric word— life.”

Karie

Poetry girl, poetry girl
I don’t know you
and yet, I know you

Cut from similar swaths
of the fabric of time
and space, little specks
in the cosmic lasagna
that is existence
WE
mutually appreciate
each other’s persistence
to be more than nil ghosts
of nihilistic apathy

Poetry girl, poetry girl
write me a psalm
or a sonnet

read them into a tin can
so I can hear them when
all’s still and quiet

Poetry girl, poetry girl
if you like this
then publish it.

Maria Lopez

Not to be confused with Mario Lopez
as she’s cooler than AC Slater
like an actual air conditioner,
has hair that comes in many different
hues and shades every time you see
her. She’s strong, stronger than most
and bolder than anyone I’ve ever known.
She’s the type of friend to call you
on your bullshit when she needs to
and pat you on the back when you
deserve it. She was the first person
I ever heard use the word polyamorous
and she was one of the first people
I knew to get seriously monogamous.
She makes someone I consider a great
friend, even if we don’t talk all the time
anymore, very happy. When I see them
together, it makes me very happy
because they both deserve it and it gives
me oceans of hope that I’m worthy
of that iron clad love and trust too.

Kana

from Kanagawa,
everything about her is
sweet and so charming.

On a car ride home,
she divulged a big secret
about her nature
almost in frustrated tears
and I knew we were
buds then, b/c she felt she
could tell me the truth.

I miss her something
fierce since she went back home to
Nippon, rising sun
Japan, land of Gojira.

Silvia

Hoops Partytime’s her real name,
she’ll straight up slap a man
because she don’t take no guff.
She calls me Al-House, we get
along because we’re both
neurotics but our neurosis
originates from different
regions of the soul
and the psyche
and experience
yet we’re kindred, akin
in certain ways, we
understand aching.
Where others indulge,
we get sick. Where
others feel strong
and confident, we
shrink a little
then
we turn to each other
and have the other act
as a coach who pushes
us with an amalgam
of harsh gentleness
towards where we
both know we
should be.

Cindy

Hugs, I miss them
giving and receiving them
from you and although
our lives have taken us
down different paths
down different roads
with different companions
I know there will always be
a part of us in each other.

Vince

calls a double cheeseburger a double chi,
befriends girls with heaving bosoms,
has a face like Ryu and hair like Ken,
espouses the virtues of the Wayne’s World
soundtrack and the Toadies’ Possum Kingdom,
doesn’t understand the Red Hot Chili Peppers,
isn’t from the 50’s but says “new fangled,”
prefers current Simpsons to classic Simpsons
because it’s more topically relevant, almost
gets gear stolen by RX Bandits cokeheads,
isn’t British but says “sticky wickets,” plays
a mean guitar and will play bass in your band,
even though he knows that not everyone
in said group is sane
because
he’s just that awesome of a guy. 

Natalie in Late June, 1997

Sitting in the passenger seat of my father’s car,
he headed westbound on 6th and made a right
onto Bandini. His red Mitsubishi marauded
like a tamed tiger down the street’s slope
and sagging droop of steepness
with East Meyler passing beneath.

Pedro High’s Summer School classes
had been dismissed for the day, fifteen
minutes and ten blocks back. A varied
demographic of teens trickled by while
we drove past, nearing the Y.

Looking for people known to me,
I saw none. Instead a shock of red hair,
the color of a spilled juice box, atop
the head of a little frame
clad in a wife beater
and plaid pants that appeared
to be highlighted on in crisscrossing
crosshatches of various Smurf shades of blue.

She sauntered in white platforms, determined
not to wilt in the heat with her bag slung over
a shoulder and a folder tucked in the crook
of that same arm.

All I could wonder was, “who’s that
and will I meet her?”

Dannel

Jew fro, Deli News pizza
AEPi meeting
Only talked about Star Wars

Beef

I.

I’ve had a love affair with red meat my whole life.
Why should it end now? I’m assuming you do too
or how else would you have garnered such a nickname?
It’s not the only thing we have in common though. Stan Lee
wrought and Jack Kirby etched heroes, Ozzy and Iommi licks
of thundering yet tasteful heaviness, and talking about movies
until our tongues lull with dryness are just some mutual passions.

While some similarities hail from just having damn good style.

Upon integrating myself into your circle of friends,
people would often mistake me for you. To be fair,
we’re both bearded fellows on the fluffier side
who wear glasses. So if they entered a room
and caught a glance of me sideways
or from the back then I’d often receive a salutation
or greeting intended for you, which would sound
something like, “Hey, Bee… Alan.”

I didn’t mind as I’ve been mistaken for much worse. Yet recognition
and understanding are funny things, because they work in other ways.

II.
We stood in an apartment of a girl I wanted who didn’t want me,
at least not in the way I wanted her. Jovial would be the way
that one could describe your usual visage, but it darkened in a pensive pallor
that night
in a parlor of Marlboro smoke and drunks destructively dj’ing,
I asked you what was wrong and you tried to give me the brush off,
but I persisted and you told me a tale of loss that added another dimension
that I had not known existed and I listened because you needed an ear 

and you thanked me and we were closer and I knew we were friends then.

Lindsey Lee

Bamf! Like Nightcrawler, you just appeared in my life.
Well, without the purple light and smell of brimstone.

The new girl

on the scene in my 17^th year back in the go-go 90s
and your newness had me keen. You’d left behind
a life of perhaps pristine prestige at Hamilton High,
a performing arts school where everyone left class
early to audition, and yet you locomoted back
to the motherland of surfers of a wavelorn beach,
teamster entitlements, and gangsta romanticism.

You came to Pedro like a college kid on winter break,
just visiting and knowing everything from being out
in the great wide open, away from the harbor. You
seemed like a Woman already and you made me
feel like a boy who wanted to be a man.

New Year’s Eve a year away from of a new millennium
and my folks had skipped town and I had what all
teenagers must have— a party. Do you remember
you and two other girls locking yourself in my room?
I’ve always wondered what you did in there. Not sure
that I should ever know.

You said I kept one of your poems. Here is one of mine.

Jardel

My sister, my best friend I never see.
¿Por qué somos invisibles? To each other?
Your hermano, your brother,
your bother— My love for you is akin to
my love of all my favorite things, because I don’t
need
to listen to Smashing Pumpkins
or watch Star Wars or eat avocados
everyday
to show how much I appreciate them
because true care is transcendent,
but my life would be way better if I did.

Steven

You towering toothpick man’s man, you.
You ooze machismo like Iggy shirtless,
like a Nick Cave lyric, like an open can of Pabst
shotgunned at a firing range. You come
from a land whose name means China
in Spanish, where chickens once caged
now are mandated by law to peck at the ground freely.
You devoured a rare steak festooned in bacon
with asparagus as garnish
right in front me
with no intent of sharing.

You cavorted with drunk broads of indeterminate ages
at nautically themed bars,
not seeing anything wrong with a little bump and grind.
You openly listened to Nu-Metal and sang and strummed Nico,
Tyler Durdened as manager of a movie theater, Don Drapered
the fuck outta college, Warhol’d yourself a well-deserved art degree,
and broke the bronco that is prosody in all the ways I wish I could. 

Fuck the Dos Equis guy, you’re thee most interesting man alive.