Lawrence Di Stefano: California Poets Part 11, Four Poems
Updated: 6 days ago
Lawrence Di Stefano
October 20th, 2026
California Poets: Part XI
Lawrence Di Stefano
Four Poems
AERATING THE FIELD (OVER THE PHONE)
As I drove back down
5 south, five minutes
after leaving you,
I told you everything
I couldn’t—
receiver to my ear,
invisible line following,
lengthening,
as I said it all,
as close to truth as I could—
but driving further away.
How it thins—
breathless,
already passed San Onofre,
just wind
from the window
I roll down after,
new air filling the car—
but my mouth,
one of the last things I tell you,
is so dry.
UNION PACIFIC
Hard to articulate, to lighten the air enough
for you, so we—like nothing happened—
could just move on, and go about our night,
all brake-light red. Little engine, I wanted
to say something, but the train never stopped,
and as we waited and watched its endless scroll
of unintelligible graffiti, I closed my eyes
and could hear a kind of heartbeat—
a heaviness I couldn't, with the train
still passing, seem to parse, or discern,
exactly, what tied it all together—
headlights beamed through the empty
boxcars, the empty auto-racks, and when
they passed, finally, and were gone, the silence
between us, with its length and breadth,
stayed.
THIRTY-THREE AND ONE-THIRD
The faintest suggestion of spring, a couple
days after Valentine’s—coffee on the stove,
its high pressure built slowly over the heat
of a low blue flame. “Please come back to me,”
says the record. It spins thirty-three times a minute.
Out the sliding door I can see the “sexual arousal”
that Tony Hoagland spoke of in a poem, in part,
about spring. I see it in the huge eucalyptuses
at the far end of the field, which sway.
In my thirty-third spring, what I want is this presence.
Thank you for asking us to consider the graffiti.
The coffee tastes good even though it’s a little burnt.
Why am I so sick with memory these days, Tony?
It’s time to turn over the record.
SONNET
What you hold up to the world,
with some sadness—
This is it.
What is seen through the viewfinder,
this fidgeting, squirming act
of presence—
This is it.
The book-in-progress,
with all its honest intensity,
is always better than the book.
I would’ve liked to—when it was
Green, you were already gone.
I was too slow, it was windy,
something got caught in my eye.
Author Bio:
Lawrence Di Stefano is a Best New Poets and a Best of the Net nominated writer. His poems can be found in Columbia Journal, Salt Hill, Waxwing, Southern Humanities Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Sonora Review, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in poetry from San Diego State University and is poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review.
Comments