November 22, 2024

culturefanaticse

Making a Monument Valley

1 min read
4 months ago Rene Solomon

Explore the September 2024 Issue

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

View More

You rock with the rose quartz, the sweetgrass, the cedar. In the summer, our city smells almost like / dusk on the rez: The reservoirs are shallow enough to be the old ocean, the one that covered the / Four Corners. The Citibank building. Hook a right down Bunker Hill, the one with the city Indians. /Their ghosts shadow the eucalyptus trees. Let them haunt you. I like it //That way: Up the 101, thick scarlet vein. I let you go bumper-to-bumper, reclaim the land between /each car. Fuck it, you honk, Let’s be sovereign! We riot in the fumes. Smoke lavender, tobacco, weeds. /Logically, the land’s been dead a long time. The smog says otherwise, //The way it rises out of the Valley every other week. A long breath let go. The Santa Anas /carry all the scents back to us that they tried to get rid of. Inhale. A long line /of cars breaks the jagged edges. Saddleback. We stop the car, hot, off Crenshaw. /When you hop out, you swear the ground kicks /Just a little bit beneath your feet.

This poem appears in the September 2024 print edition.

Related posts:

  1. Some Dominican Wisdom We Can All Use
  2. Dear Therapist: I Just Discovered My 35-Year-Old Son
  3. How 2024 Could Transform American Elections
  4. Nine Books About Aging, Growing, and Changing

More Stories

Donald Trump points his finger, and it reflects in the opposite direction on a pane of glass 6 min read

Trump Wants to Have it Both Ways on Education

11 hours ago Rene Solomon
An orange-tinted image of multiple bowls of beans 3 min read

Give Beans a Chance

15 hours ago Rene Solomon
Black-and-white photo of Matt Gaetz 4 min read

Trump’s First Defeat

16 hours ago Rene Solomon

You may have missed

Donald Trump points his finger, and it reflects in the opposite direction on a pane of glass 6 min read

Trump Wants to Have it Both Ways on Education

11 hours ago Rene Solomon
An orange-tinted image of multiple bowls of beans 3 min read

Give Beans a Chance

15 hours ago Rene Solomon
Black-and-white photo of Matt Gaetz 4 min read

Trump’s First Defeat

16 hours ago Rene Solomon
5 min read

Trump Is Building the Most Anti-Semitic Cabinet in Decades

18 hours ago Rene Solomon