California Gestalt by Jessica Yuan
published in New Delta Review, Issue 11.2
How small the rains that feed that city,
that settle its dust and high flat glare: city leaning
back in its chair against the Coastal Ranges,
city paved smooth and level to the concrete drain,
the channelized river. So little of it and so confined.
I went past every morning and also believed
there was One Way to manage land and water,
to follow its inscriptions, downhill,
Mountains-to-Sea—
where river strokes
the esophageal hollow, memory sinks
a pale thread of root: the yellow streetlight, blooming.
Wet hedge square-clipped in the breath mint sky,
curb licked clean, draining the trapezoidal valley
of sun-flat cement. Body’s width of water
meek in the light. One unruly patch, cloud of sun flies,
frilled inches of algae, dead rabbit, ducklings
stepping around it in their slow march
to Newport Beach—
Now I am the duck,
remembering: the water as conveyor belt,
chorus line, arrow glittering with dew.
Now I am the rabbit and I’ve had enough:
water & no water, detritus, desire:
I will burst through the pores with one more
helping of life, I will spill over the lowest railing.
Could I have seen it then? If I had followed
the levee to its sand-foam mouth, worming
knee-deep out to shore, would I have caught its meaning, would I have known who sat behind my eyes and placed this image high on the shelf of that hollow concrete year.
