Brian Kim Stefans: California Poets Part 10, Five Poems

Brian Kim Stefans

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Brian Kim Stefans

Five Poems

Trans

If birth is love, and hate is shit,

the centuries are full of it,

one the other, Love the only gambit

that links these efforts in a circuit

of forms that are hotly singular,

of bodies that are exponential

in the forms they take, within the swerve—

the clinamen in the blandly political.

Bit

Bit about seeing

delicate people walk down the street,

the boy has tight jeans

and designer sneakers

and is showing to his friend,

a girl with a ballooning

shirt, expensive

baseball cap,

something, maybe a pet

ant he keeps in an aerated

plastic box, or, more

likely, some stupid thing

on his iPhone

and it seems

as if a little wind could blow them away.

Then there are those

walking down the street

looking like they want to

kick some ass,

arms full of tats,

arms so meaty they have to

walk with them

angling outward from

the chest—hrumph!

nasty shitkickers,

in another decade they might have

listened to Black Flag

and it seems

as if a little wind could blow them away.

Afternoon in a Beer Garden

1.

            Come and talk,

            Ephebe!

In a Highland Park beer garden, Sunday afternoon,

girls in Dolce whatever shoot Instagram selfies

by the neon bar out front—it’s only 3 pm!—

giggling their tourist’s chorus though they’re from the valley,

while bearded post-production types in expensive jeans

elegant beers floating in their smirking fists

—oops, I missed—tax their well-fed intelligences

out back slaying their peers at shuffleboard with strategies

equal parts pool hall and Assassin’s Creed,

only to share them later with bro-spirited camaraderie,

with the earnestness of bar charts used to explain

the population decline of Chinese giant salamanders.

2.

The pretty barista-barmaid asks me my last name,

which I spit out trying to articulate the consonants

including the “with an f” to save her trouble

handwriting on her inner skull the orthographic options.

Strangely, the bar stools are taken up by man boys,

solo wallflowers while the valley girls cluster

by the wall with the mirror that reflects the neon glow

of their faces bottom-lit by their greasy iPhones,

the agile swipe-and-send a native-born custom

I could later gush and awe at in National Geographic,

the rare breadth of the arm in a collapsed L,

the fresh-tombstone smiles and plucked eyebrows

that make them all seem one though they’re not all blondes,

not all tall or short, not rich or poor or from the valley,

but a tribe of equals with esoteric skills

to this one at least (foregoing the Spanish option

for the Austrian Sauvignon Blanc, one dollar cheaper),

piping with pregnant joy this frivolous hour,

the man boys looking on, some tempted by shuffleboard,

peering into their IPAs or at each other

the steady drip of their artisanal liquid courage

failing to provide words to the youthful masters

high on their steeds of designer aluminum

protecting them from the throes of conventional disaster.

I remember your fruity beer—the fruit, not the name—

sniff my budget grape and ask for a glass of water.

3.

            Your beer,

            Ephebe!

The L.A. sun seems minutes from Norwegian gloom—

we speculate it’s the ash from last month’s fires

coming back to douse our fires like a health inspector

chasing the food trucks and bacon-wrapped dogs out to the burbs.

But the lanky types play on, if leaning feebly

on their shuffleboard cues, or sticks, whatever,

still chatting glibly though the teams have climbed to eight

their parties having merged with other conquerors

clanging chests with their tangy pints to signal amity,

other semaphores arising from their gestures,

some in t-shirts now, with darker skin—they might be locals

but are fit and smiling having weathered the rents

and the rising price of jeans and the indie-scene tenants,

and all sharing humbly their battles with C++

bearing the scars to prove it—their decent incomes—

and laughing here playing shuffleboard as the Norwegian sun

graces with its sanguine rays another photo

taken in portrait mode with its artificial bokeh.

4.

The Instagram selfies shimmy out into the web

refreshing it like chicken soup over the absent tundra

of nutrition- and Kardashian-starved Siberia,

and populate the bachelor ghost towns of Tinder

like a fleet of drag queens the thirsty outback of Australia

—they’re here! the town will cheer, hurray for the neon bar

that has inspired the lazy arms of these young girls

to finally take some photos! yay for lively interior decor!

5.

            I offer you another,

            Ephebe—but you decline!

I work my way back to the neon bar to fetch another

and am jostled by a quartet of stout football fans the width of semis,

guffawing some ancient jargon I can’t discern—

perhaps they are talking about the ladies with shimmering hips?

or the weedy post-production types and their corporate English?

or maybe just the scores? or old high school tropes

developed in the parking lot after the game with ice boxes of Coors

spilling out onto the gravel and expired butts?

—which is too bad! If I knew, I’d have something to tell you

sitting down with the wine from a Spanish province

the twenty-something oenologist installed in the menu

to entice the unadventurous—me!—as a safe something different

than the indifferent Sauvignon Blanc, the food staple

—the milk, kimchi and tortilla—of the inveterate budget tippler.

6.

            Oh Ephebe,

            it’s strange!

We can’t be fascinated, but can’t be indifferent!

In a Highland Park beer garden, Sunday afternoon,

to want a carnival and to just get statues,

not even the naughty, naked types in Central Park

but frozen Pop Art, forms flat as drywall

and not the less happy for it, not less alive,

but pages from a flip book, its dancing cycles

you can rehearse again and again to admire your line,

the way the squares and circles morph into dogs

chasing the pesky rabbit across fields of green

or the dancing Tinkerbells of Disney’s Fantasia,

—you’ve seen it several times on your Netflix stream,

dwarves and square-eyed anime, Trons and Black Panthers

giving shuffleboard tips to a B-movie actress

(now that’s an ancient term—I’m thinking Sharknado)

while floating on a plinth of CGI above Kansas

where the selfie-sticks can’t reach nor the taunts of critics,

the snark, the poems or the trolling parents

—we can’t miss a moment, but too easily survive

the flattering tone of the lights on these young pop stars!

7.

(But you turn away to turn to, become philosophical

in a different time zone—your phone screen,

wondering if the sinewy forms in their factory-distressed jeans

have funny profiles, and if they genuinely like hiking.

            Oh, Ephebe!)

8.

We’re finally entering Norway—time to don my hoodie.

The party’s done, the shuffleboard is empty,

—the “nymphs are departed.” You tell me I’m pretentious

but wasn’t surprised when, in the classroom, I got it

when a student dimly asked me if I’d heard of Kanye West—

I knew that he was crazy but a musical genius,

which he never tires of telling us while selling us hoodies

—which was nice to hear, since I still fail to grasp

the casts of millions grazing in the latest dating apps,

and flounder on Spotify, meekly retreat to David Bowie

(last night it was Queen, another, The Clash).

My cow’s tongue runs recon on the empty wine glass.

9.

            Ephebe!

            We chatter brightly

or desultorily, no matter, about our next three years,

you doing something quite interesting—internship in Italy?

but only if you don’t get that Fulbright that will send you to Italy?

or at least a decent job (but not in the industry)?

And me? Most likely, flat-assed, still stationed here

typing, sipping wine (“Sauv”), sweating the next staycation

day drinking with you—the shuffleboard, the IPAs—

then offering to buy you a drink, and then you just getting up

saying you can pay for the damn thing yourself!

Rant (2019)

The rupture—spontaneous combustion

            of the President’s inner circle,

      the bloviation that smelled like a Funyun

                        to Angela Merkel,

the “regular” and  “irregular” diplomacy

            that made even Ukraine look copacetic,

      like the sugar and sugar-free—who can tell?—candy

                        to the dead diabetic,

the endless games of golf with syco-bordinates

            who struggle to sing in the major key,

      and they do so nicely—but soon get bored of this,

                        then poop pants like a monkey,

the rantings, ravings, cravings, and tweetings

            that drive the internet like pornography,

      happily unread by those still sleeping,

                        shifting in guilt-free undies,

the travel to distant lands by the bromantic lawyer,

            an Italian-American Byron, huzzah!

      capable, loves to flirt, takes great pictures—toiler

                        in the armpit of SpongeBob,

the rupture—Carl Schmitt’s creator of enemies,

            the sovereign exceeding the paper laws

      (there’s a touch of Carlyle), the Breaking Bad frenemy

                        we hired to gas roaches,

the looker, the ugly, the Saint, the non-Saint

            we hired to scratch the chalkboard,

      the one that we could never venerate, or even hate

                        given Pizzagate, Pepe, the “deep state,” the golf course,

—something seems untidy—Schiff,

            with those terribly de-visibled lips of his

      (not unlike Mulvaney’s) has slid the writ

                        of Impeachment across the bar to McConnell’s mint julep,

the rupture—spontaneous combustion

            of the President’s inner circle,

      crow thinking swan, shitstain thinking Rocky road,

                                    and morons professing a miracle.

Food, Hélas!

This crazy blonde wants me to make food for her—

she’s barreling across the L.A. freeway and cutting lights,

though I’d told her my noggin would retire

at a denouement past nine—after a bottle of Gallo wine.

She’s somehow demoniacally obsessed with my string beans,

my canned turkey chili, pop corn and kimchi,

my world famous DiGiorno’s pizza, my salmon from Trader Joe’s,

my exquisite Ben and Jerry’s, my bottle of Gallo wine—

and possibly with my cigarettes, since she doesn’t really smoke

—excuses to smoke don’t ever come cheap—

or maybe with my cats—David, with his Clooney good looks,

or Chelsea, a half-ton of Russian Blue physique.

I certainly don’t think it’s me, a television chef

whose one achievement is butter squash microwaved with ramen

—perhaps it’s the couch, where we’d watch Netflix

in a galaxy long ago, in the time when she’d lived here.

Author Bio:

Brian Kim Stefans is a poet, translator, and digital artist who teaches at UCLA. His recent books include For Trapped Things (Roof Books, 2023) and the translations Festivals of Patience: The Verse Poems of Rimbaud (Kenning Editions, 2021). His critical book Word Toys: Poetry and Technics was published by the University of Alabama Press in 2017. His digital work “The Dreamlife of Letters” (2000) is widely anthologized in electronic literature scholarship and curricula. Poems have appeared in Poetry (Chicago), Lana Turner and other venues including Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (2013). His website is: arras.net.