Where the Santa Ana Freeway inherits the Long Beach

Ode to My Grecian Urns

• Fake, faux, ersatz and what’s more, there are two
• of them. Keats said the sonnet wouldn’t do.
• Wrong tone. No Pindarics — not the right form
• for philosophy. The poem must transform
• the art, ekphrastic creed. Mine would require
• some spell or wand or sleight of hand, dire
• magic. Both claret with a vine. Mouth, bronze.
• One flared at the top, slim neck like a swan’s,
• tall and narrow. The other wide and low,
• built-in handles. From not-so-long ago,
• some California school, copies to the core.
• One, a column-crater; one amphora —
• Not ancient Greek. Can everything inspire?
• Yes, wrote C. Rossetti: a flint holds fire.

At King Taco

• Where the Santa Ana Freeway (the 5)
• inherits the Long Beach (the 710)
• and I wonder if I’ll ever arrive
• while Herbie Mann notches the bedpost of jazz
• with a flute on station KLON.
• Yea, Lord, having driven through the chasm
• of the valley of the shadow not of
• death fearing no evil but oblivion,
• I hear “why are you so mean to me,” rubato.
• The alternative to sex songs are love-
• songs on mainstream frequencies, and my mien
• turns upbeat to match the freeway’s motto:
• all wounds healed by a vehicle and speed.
• (Save those caused when leaving is the deed.)

In My Land: we have

• artisanal danish. The quality
• of light a cross between Biarritz and
• the perishables room at Costco.
• The Sunset Psychic. My favorite cousin
• (almost a sister) (we always forgive).
• Brow bars. The Santa Ana riverbed
• trail. Newport Dunes. Madame Helena
• Modjeska. (Modrzejewka.) Second wishes.

• When they turned the country on its side, I
• was watching Lucy. I rolled into the
• sea, but am shaped like a surfboard. The berm
• found me. Since then I have become a Hass
• avocado, an orange, a clove of
• garlic. A strawberry. Second wishes.

Patty Seyburn has published four books of poems: Perfecta (What Books Press, 2014), Hilarity (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002), and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). She is a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and co-editor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry (poolpoetry.com). Currently, her favorite words are “cruller” and “compote.”