With sunset over Glendale, two fair maidens peered downward
caught foul and unaware o' how they'd crashed so violently east
wondering if the embattled waves smashing every bit of coastal aspiration and personal dignity 
could, in truth, possess the unbridled force necessary to beat and bury them in this occident
the smell of an hour lined with dirt, not evidenced by hands or lines crossed their brows
curious and desperate, they asked Orleans, "Will it never be morning?"

 

The white cirrus overhead taunted the heroines like an inch of snow on December fourth
—life was a cold bitch with a runny nose
movement was all around them and yet they stood implacably still 
until
a grizzled veteran with a psyche full of foes
let his damaged and feverish rod out of its clothes
ursula looked at him and she laughed and she cried
violette saw nothing, said nothing, jumped onto glendale and died

 

Ursula wept for a thousand and one days 
and when her eyes dried and her blouse wrung out, 
she exited the haze 
for a blinding white light
a voice like her mother's assured her all would be right 
as the John from Arcadia plunged his prick into the night 
penetrating her maidenhood like only a first love could

 

She thought of Lawrence, Kansas and how she wished she was from there 
and all of the emotional groups she loved from there 
and how she cried to their music with her short pixie fair hair 
thirteen years old, bleached, stoplight on the corner of Moorpark and Victory

 

At that moment, life was a loss but her overall record was over five hundred and one day she saw herself living 
in Verona or Florence maybe Rome or at the very least Venice
where the surf was cheap and everyone was inked up and orange and pounding all their flesh
till the drops came raining violently down to clear out the concrete pastures and make way for a peerless Silence.

 

--Eugene Kotlyarenko, 2014