Unincorporated East Los Angeles #1

It's where they put all the cemeteries
At the turn of the 20th century
But they didn't wait long enough
For the rush of dead bodies
At the turn of the 21st
Not because of any war
Just critical mass and a city in flames
Every 24 years or so

Atlantic winds its way around the 710
And you have no idea why
They named the street after the ocean
On the other side of the country
Not the one you could almost see from there
If the buildings were a bit higher
And the skies a lot clearer

There are stairs and old rooms, never to be entered
There are plates and plastic spoons, for all the convenience
There is time and she nods her head at the sun coming up
The radio station pours in from the west side
Music defies the sun
Just as it defers the dark
To another sphere of up and down
To the border at the very next town
All six of them, wherever you happen to be

She called it the informal economy
But it looks like every other place
A few more 99 cent stores, a few more 98 cent stores
One more 97 cent store. not a single Starbucks or Trader Joe's
But there's a grid
There are gas stations with clean islands
There's a smog check guy
And just like the one in Santa Monica, he's not above being bribed
(A twenty plus the forty is all it takes)

He died in that one old room
She almost joined him until she shut it down
She moved across the hall
Except there is no hall, just stairs
And she needs to pin it all down some day
The reason she throws nothing away
She needs to pin it all down some day
The day they give her the back yard
She won't mess that one up, she tells me

Each day I drive away
Toward the freeway up there or the one to the right
I think not another day, never another night
I'm not going back, there's safety in not coming back
But it's not up to me, is it?
I hear the dead silence
As I inch my way onto the 710 south
There are corpses and gravestones beyond that wall
They're not coming back
And it looks like I'm clear to Long Beach once again

August 4, 2009