Amy Raasch

Dia de los Muertos

On the Day of the Dead, marigolds jam

my parking meter. City of L.A., don’t worry:

it still took my money & my illusions the dead are not

here with me sipping a Holy Molé Mocha spiced

by barista Nicely. A woman in hot pants, crocheted

lion-tail and filigreed metal wings like resonator guitars

made by the French luthier I met at that party in the Valley

wobbles by. Wrapped around her like a handcuff,

a burnt caramel flan of a man with strawberry schnapps

cheeks spits out a loose tooth, grins blood, pockets

his masterpiece. He’s MY animal, she wheezes

& winks one leathered lid at the neighborhood cat

who hunts crickets, butterflies, and squirrels the way

the ocean hunts a drowning man, the sun hunts

the burning boy with wings, a woman hunts a zygote

before it cleaves. On Main, men swing cranes

and sledgehammers, eat sandwiches with their legs dangling

fifty feet in the air. They never see the knit-tailed crone

climb the scaffolding & leap from a suspended girder,

flapping & calling for the impossible bird with the lion body

to dive down her throat and let her animal go.

 

Keep a black dress handy.

My neighbors Devo and Alex

drink rosé at 10 a.m.,

compliment my dress as I pass.

 

So Marilyn meets Jackie O.

I tell them I am going to a funeral,

bringing glamour to the dead.

 

But the dead have their own glamour,

swim their own black-bodied water.

My four-inch heels trespass their dirt.

 

White roses tossed, I kick them off,

let August pavement singe my feet

& hobble like a broken dancer

 

across the cemetery lot, spike heels

clasped in one fist like the necks

of two black swans. Santa Ana winds

 

spin tiny cyclones across graves. 

It’s too dry to cry. I’m too thirsty too drink.

My old black convertible spits upholstery

 

like foam on waves. The West hangs

from the mirror like a dirty rabbit’s foot.

The sky looks lucky as a worm on a hook.

Bela Lugosi is buried here and so is Sharon Tate.

Smiling in sunglasses,

mourners take photographs

at a funeral.

 

I consider how taking pictures

of my cat in the sun

the day before he died

 

was and was not

like taking photographs

at a funeral.

Performance Art, Venice Beach

Mary, black-bobbed,

pomegranate-kneed

& once lovely, pops up

from inside a trash can

like a Jack-in-the-Box

yelling,

Women are trash! Women are trash!

 

Skin leatherbrown in the sun,

her teeth gleam

white as grains of rice

the Boardwalk huckster

inscribes with names

of tourists

who pay only

 

if they can watch.

I quote Mary

when I steal her bit

and put it in my show.

99-seat theatre doesn’t pay

            but whenever I see her,

I slip her 20 bucks.


Amy Raasch learned to drive in Detroit but has lived in Los Angeles for many years and is thus fluent in both automatic and stick shift. She makes up her own tunings on guitar, plays piano like a monkey at a typewriter and sounds pretty good on flute. She makes records, movies, theatrical multimedia shows and a damn fine banana bread. Her writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The American Journal of Poetry, ANMLY, F(r)iction, and a pile of large black sketch books you are instructed to burn when she dies. She holds a BA from The University of Michigan and an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars. amyraasch.com

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