It comes in the beauty parlor,
A small concentration in the corner,
Fumes and oranges,
A man requesting a wax,
A woman who immediately needs sequins.

This is what
I wanted to discuss.

Later, it happens again,
At Milk, on Poinsettia, near La Brea,
As I think of the cake with blue frosting,
All the delicious pleasures,
But left out

By Jews in small groups coming back

Without me,
What won’t integrate, since this has no given
And I will have to shift everything or my meaning
If I am here.

The sun can come in through the shadow and tan you.

It’s not always there. Other people may refuse to participate,
Like when I abruptly asked the man in the store where he’d gotten the Times.
But then someone spoke:
A tall woman needed to understand
Why the dresses were forty dollars.

Let me return.
It’s ruined—a scratch of music—
A mind-control experiment.

“The world of delicate human relations”
In which I kill
Except the man
Wants to be quiet.

But what about
That woman?
The knife I used is still on her table,
A secret invader.

The haze surrounding the hills is tinged with medium-sized particulates.
Every morning, her white car is covered.

The religious Jews
Have stopped coming.
It’s no longer morning.

All this time has passed in the time of the poem.

The moment is the nail-salon women speaking not Mandarin, but Vietnamese.
It’s important, an altar,
Close to the gas station and people with signs begging
In the lashing air.