Dusk in the City of Angels, AJ Favorito

I spend a cold summer searching

                                           for my own hill to die on and find

a bowlful of sun, the lip

                                                 of a gulch paved over.

The shortest distance         between two points is a broken grid.

                                                     You go quickly walking sideways

like the neon crab, sleepless 

in next door’s parking lot.

I wander the drugstore            roof to watch the marquee sun rise.

There are no omens here         only facts:

      kiss the black cat every walk to the dumpster,

          hammer 

a lawn chair under

a ladder                     to watch the parade children pass. 

                                  Here, we burn red without knowing

                      how and we

light up          our dead with it.

Nostalgia     highly volatile             scarce on the inner planets

lights my every

            tangled path home.

About the Author

Meredith Adams · George Mason University

Meredith Adams teaches preschool and writes poems in Portland, Oregon. She uses both disciplines to explore the language of environments, DIY as ritual, and process over product. Her work has appeared in CARE, soft surface poetry, and is forthcoming in Selfish Magazine. This piece first appeared in The Pointed Circle. Find her on the apps @murmurdith.

About the Artist

AJ Favorito · Drexel University

AJ Favorito is a writer, artist, and filmmaker from northern New Jersey. For the past four years, he’s been a Film & Video major at Drexel with minors in both Screenwriting and Art History on top of multiple internships and opportunities. His time at Drexel led to him becoming a published writer and artist through the school’s literary magazine as well as writing 2 feature scripts, multiple short films, and co-writing two tv episodes. He is currently working on his senior thesis while also writing personal projects and hopes to find employment in the entertainment industry after he graduates from Drexel. This piece first appeared in Maya.