O California: A New Yorker poem

Cuyama Valley palms. Photo: LA Observed

Sarah Holland-Batt, an Australian poet, has a poem in this issue of the New Yorker that she calls O California. She reads it aloud at the link. Here's a sample with a local reference.

I want to wake in the lagoon of the sky
where sunlight binds the mutilated palm-tree dawn
like duct tape, an aerial shot rolling and rolling
out of town in the muffled trunk of a brown panel van
along the death roads, the desert roads, the hairpin
turns, California, the desert silvering in my eye
like a coyote, I want to swim in the jewel jade pool
of your lonesome foothill vowels,
stretch out under the mirroring clouds
like a million rooftop deck chairs, feel
that blankness unfurl in my mind like luxury,
California, your beautiful blankness, your sheen.

O, shake me a basil gimlet at Silver Lake
and tell me about your tattoos, hermana, how death
is that bad tooth wobbling in my head…

O read the rest here.