Late Lunch

I’ll have the Blue
Plate Special! We say.
What?! No blue plates
here at all?! Fucking
Los Angeles.
*
The fellow with the cowboy mouth

is a man I love
*
Return trip

Alameda Street, 6:45 pm.
I offer the man asking
for change an orange.
I’m trying to get a ticket,
he says, staring. A ticket.
*
Misha taught me plants

Handgrab of rosemary
from an apartment compound
on Montana Street falls
out of my lefthand leather
pocket, snap unsnapped
*
Not the Chelsea

The Georgian Hotel,
a deep cerulean. The bar
patrons drink, sheltered
from the sea’s easy chills
by flapping walls of plastic