Around the Hotsy Totsy

1

Nights, the young crowd, hipsters mostly.

By day: old bartender, old men.

2

Coastline boxcars thrum:

nights we wake & hear them pick up speed

a slow rag played out sad

then faster wild harmonica

blown long

cloudsong

along the crooked elbow, California

they claim the coastal route

for freight for trade

3

Coyote bush & buckeye hunker:

on Chevron land now many squatters camp

perpetually inside the rail-yard swamp—

refinery, chaparral and foxweed;

tents & barrel drums.

4

Once this was a mussel-gathering spot a midden

once a farm a wartime factory

who lives here now paves paths with cardboard;

& if you leave your trail by accident

you find a piss-stained mattress, jetsam needles.

Between poppies, rusted box spring.

Half a greeting:

-LCOME.