Victoria Melekian: California Poets Part 8, Five Poems
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
Victoria Melekian
Five Poems
City of Angels
O, Los Angeles, City of Angels,
California’s sequined gem, my home-
coming queen, The Town of Our Lady
the Queen of the Angels—I grew up
in her sprawl, played hop scotch
and dodge ball in her cradled basin.
She is Smog Queen, Traffic Queen,
mother of us all: Dodgers, Lakers,
Clippers, and Kings. Los Angeles,
queen of icons: Norms, Bob’s Big Boy,
and Winchell’s Donuts. Home to
Olvera Street, the Miracle Mile, Holly-
wood stars. She is Guerilla Tacos,
Musso and Frank Grill, pastrami
at Canter’s. She’s tug boats in the harbor,
Catalina on a clear day. My Lady
of the Angels is skyscrapers, back-
yard chickens, a slog of red taillights
through the valley. She is plum-smudged
sunsets, a harvest moon over Capitol
Records, the city where I learned how
to parallel park, navigate downtown’s
four level interchange, how to be a person—
one of many. My town of Our Lady
the Queen of Angels is a twenty-four hour,
red-hot-neon legend that never fades.
Swing by. The porch light is blinking.
Someone’s Peeling an Orange
That scent, I can almost taste the tartness.
It smells like summers with Maureen and Abby,
sitting on sun-warmed cement steps, sticky sweet
juice dripping down our chins and arms, dodging
red ants and bees, ignoring calls to come in,
laughing at how mothers stretch out a name:
Aaabyyy, but when they yell that third time,
you know they mean it: right now, Missy.
Six o’clock dinner at the small glass table,
kick the can until dark. Before riots, before fires
lit up the L.A. sky, before the air tasted like smoke.
If we’d known, we’d have loved it more.
Forgotten Language of Dreams
Your letter said you’d arrive by train
when midnight is brushed white with moon.
I waited. I waited a century. Morning came
with a sigh. Silver sorrow, empty spoons
whirling wild. Sadness idling on the stairs,
straining pockets, patched over holes. Baby blue,
moody blue, sky blue sheets stretched across
a chilly lake bed. Red rose petals tossed
into the air. Days, months from now,
I’ll still be combing them from my hair.
Starting From Scratch
For reasons that no longer matter,
I chose to start over, moved to a small town
bordered by fences draped in purple and pink
bougainvillea, a town defined by the sea:
surfboards leaning against walls and wet suits
dripping from porch railings into pots of red
geraniums. I lived six blocks from the edge
of land and water in a place I couldn’t afford,
but I needed to know where I was. Some days
I knew I was home only because the key fit
in the door and bills in the mailbox were addressed
to me. I walked miles and miles of sand, watched
surfers and dolphins and whales, collected shells,
and fell in love with the scent of ocean mist
and beach fires. I learned the sea turns rusty
brown just before storms, that June feels like
the inside of a pot lid, that I can count
on the tides and the beauty of a thin strip
of salmon pink hovering above the horizon.
Sometimes there is a green flash at sunset.
We See the Past When We Look at Stars
When my boys were young,
I tucked them into bed, folded the blanket
into a “v” to pull up later if the night was cold.
After a story, I kissed their foreheads,
whispered sweet dreams, and stood at the door
as glow-in-the-dark stars lit up the ceiling and walls.
One by one my sons grew into their own lives.
When the last left for college, I found his good-bye—
one star glowing on the ceiling above my bed.
I took that star, added a galaxy more,
and everywhere I’ve lived, my portable universe
has been the last to peel off, first to stick on.
Tonight I tucked grandchildren into my bed
under the same star, faint but still glowing.
Author Bio:
Victoria Melekian writes poetry, short fiction and, on occasion, a novella-in-flash. Her work has appeared in print and online and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She lives with her husband in Carlsbad, California where the weather is almost always perfect. For more, visit her website https://victoriamelekian.com
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