Michael Caylo-Baradi: California Poets Part 10, Four Poems

Michael Caylo-Baradi

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Michael Caylo-Baradi

Four Poems

Wallflower

Your car is shiny,

& deforms anything it reflects.

It stretches your body,

into destinations

huddled in blind spots

on the 118 freeway,

its clouds, & premonitions.

This is how love songs

lose you on the radio.

It’s only 10pm,

& the night refuses to age,

as you stop for gas,

& lotto tickets,

to get you started

w/ the game of luck,

before getting soaked

in beer & margaritas

at the local dive,

to feel in sync

w/ the crowd,

w/ languid eyes,

w/ things they

keep to themselves,

floating in the most

peculiar way,

as David Bowie might say,

floating far above the world

away from Earth,

where there’s nothing

you can do, as you lose

ground control

The Streets of Pacoima

                                              After John Ashbery

The streets of Pacoima grew out of contempt,

always angry with history. They are crucified to an idea:

that people exploit other people, for instance,

though that’s only one example.

They emerged from voices echoing down

the nearby hill, sweating of stories about galleons

floating on the blood of genocides,

until all that hate became listless vindictiveness.

Then you are left with an idea of community,

and the feeling of accruing emptiness about yourself

in crowds, among cohorts who fly by you

like beacons chasing their American dreams.

Midnight is a sentinel. Much of your time

has been occupied by performances behind the wheel,

burning rubber, waking quiet intersections,

as you chase shadows to the heart of the desert inside,

to the 9 to 5, the graveyard shift, or of having the closeness

of tattoos be sunlight to you, pressing you

into a startled wakefulness, the way morning dew

replenishes the faces of leaves from dust.

You will be happy here. Fragile and nonchalant,

you know you have deconstructed

the language of domination, thoughtfully sweating

all your energy into feelings

monumental as struggle and melodrama,

storming the calendar like vicious Santa Anas,

scattering into bullets, spit, and tears

Cinematic

We trap the afternoon in straws, sucking car chases without end.

The noise & explosions are all they’re cracked up to be.

We like predictable: the popcorn we chew activates expectations

for future movie dates, buttered with giggles & diet coke,

as we gaze into each other’s abyss in the dark, plotting a soundtrack

of twists & turns, including curve balls we have to swallow

with unmitigated acceptance. Up there, on that screen, we bury

the language of apologies we can’t stand to hear,

weighted like road rage on the 405, or any freeway in a city

soaring with innuendos about drive-by ecstasies.

Sometimes I let nights collapse on your chest, spreading all

over you like your favorite cologne. We are a conspiracy

of beards intertwining, after all. We don’t traffic on yesteryears

anymore. We sweat out traumas in childhood

at the bench press, & feel the fathers we never had

on the curve of biceps we scowl before a wall of mirrors

Driving Los Angeles

Out of nowhere, they invade an intersection with centrifugal force,

laughing around it, like oversized little boys.

They disrupt the flow of traffic from all directions, & leave black,

overlapping circles or ‘donuts’ with their tires.

                 //

Gluttons for attention, they crave for cops to chase them away

far into the night. This is how muscle cars drool

for the art of escape,

                              sweating

with velocities

                 //

Soon, streetlights glimmer with inhibitions. Their vanishing points

converge like camaraderie smoking a pack of cigarettes.

It fills their lungs with a city growing restless around wheels,

steering themselves through a maze of shadows,

spreading like a vast muteness, after the engine is finally

turned off at home, or after a fatal collision,

                                                                      before the cops arrive

Author Bio:

Michael Caylo-Baradi is an alumnus of The Writers’ Institute at The Graduate Center (CUNY), directed by André Aciman. His work has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Hobart, Kenyon Review Online, The Galway Review, Galatea Resurrects, London Grip, New Pages, PopMatters, and elsewhere. His debut pamphlet Hotel Pacoima came out in 2021 from Kelsay Books. In another name, he has been an editor’s pick for flash features at Litro Magazine.