Over the course of the last twenty-some
years, the immigrant population in California has increased five-fold,
of which over half have come from Mexico, according to the Public
Policy Institute of California.
Twenty cigarette butts have
broken down to dust.
These men standing at the corner of Shoup and Ventura cut away from
their former dusty roads via truck, train, tunnel. In the
intersection’s gutters, scrapes of paper, transactions leaked from
wallets, windows, pockets blow past them and fall by the shedding trees
below the freeway. The tan patches on their jeans—not sewn on pants by
a spouse—are the earth’s hands from around this urban pasture.
Ten oranges have broken down
to dust.
The drop in his voice indicates the
word is coming. It is as if my boss’s birdsong choked midnote on
a worm piece. He repositions his eyeglasses and empties his eyes of me.
And then he says it, with liquid amber not far behind, which forms a
West Coast caravan of speech suitable for folks who, on the outset,
don’t want to be derogatory, but in the end, are. His word journey’s
jettison: Mexican.
Four plastic-coated pieces
of paper have broken down to dust.
The sun has bleached the soda box left in the arroyo. My dog pisses on
the bank, and I make an inverted L with my body. A neighbor had hired
them to dig into his canyon wall, each man using a shovel the size of a
cookie sheet for his infinity pool. At noontime they sat in these
woodlands, sprawled on the duff in moments of dolce farniente eating sandwiches
beside Styrofoam coolers.
One plastic film container
has broken down to dust.
On Kanan Road they bring and abandon office chairs on rollers under the
canopy of live oaks and next to utility poles at the base of the Santa
Monica Mountains. Some even lean back and swivel; comfrey scraps the
bottom of their boots. No sweat in the canthus, just yet. The break
lights on the freeway create a surgeon’s incision in a darkened
operating room: this city needs alterations.
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