DIRECTIONS
West to East
15-minute walk to Green line Conservatory stop. 4-minute wait. Train full upon arrival, the morning lurch of middle managers. So good at balancing during the standing. The path is the goal, of course it is. Nostalgia bites: Heterosexual and homonormative capitalists ohh ahhh up Michigan Avenue but who cares? The water calls. The arrival feels so wow I’m home. Baking on the sand before braving it, the little sea. But. Oak Street Beach is full of white people. Two white ladies in the water nearby. One says: I told him yeah I live on the southside but like in the good area, Hyde Park, so it’s okay to come visit. Ick. Poisoning the flow. Time to go home. First, a donut at the Stan’s nearest the Red line stop on State. Then the small trek down into the subway. Two stops up, but long, long tracks. Off at North and Clybourn. Then the 72 bus to North and Oakley. Dinner with Rey, an old friend from first days here.
West to South
66 bus picks up right in front of the married lover’s house. Take it eastbound and transfer in the loop. Walk around a little bit. Midday Tuesday quiet-ish. Brunch with Hae-jin. Worry cuz Hae-jin is still in love with someone who doesn’t care at all. Think about it, the big ache, until catching the 15 Express, southbound on Lake Shore Drive. Get lost in it, the water horizon elixir, rumble of bus motor. Get off on 55th Street stop, then a short stroll down to 53rd. Hae-jin is there already, smoking and smiling by a tree.
City to Suburbs
Only one way out: hitch a ride with Reese. Pick up in front of the tattoo shop in Irving Park. Or take the Kimball bus to the Blue line and wait at the intersection. Reese swoops in just a minute after alighting, and helps put baggage in the car. Drive and talk the whole time, about: healing relationships with men; life path numbers 4 and 11; self-assessment as masochism. I-90 is an artery, never fully clogged but scum gathers. The landscape will turn to mush. Outlet malls, car dealerships, Jimmy Johns. No mounds or hills or high slopes. It isn’t possible to see the water from here. Only the straight line ahead.
SAN FERNANDO VALLEY PSYCHIC
She/I was driving 48 minutes through the valley to see this psychic. Warm gray fadeout to yellow afternoon, concrete channel flipping up the 170 to I-5 to the 405. The psychic had offered a discount on her/psychic services: first session for $39, no additional purchase necessary. She/I was cloudy. Couldn’t trust her/my own read about the uncertain mind.
She/psychic worked out of her/psychic home, a tiny fluffy smoke gray dog at her feet. “Gloria,” she/psychic said. She/I could trust in her/psychic power. Eastern European with maybe Roma ancestry, she/I chose to believe. Her/psychic accent was real, and she/psychic didn’t smile at all.
She/psychic took me to a bright room with a wide table in the center. Two armchairs facing each other. We sat in the polarity sphere, logic shut out in favor of esoteric arithmetic. She/psychic took my palms and read them. “Long life, peaceful death, multiple lovers, multiple heartbreaks, no children, moderate wealth.” She/psychic snatched her/my eyes and read them. “Your great-grandmother was a murderess and a slave. You suffer from depression. You have had at least 82 past lives, and in the most recent, you were a mistress. Your karmic lover can’t forget you, but will always hurt you.”
She/psychic read the cards and tea leaves and confirmed it: a blood curse now inextricable, nested too long and with too much success: excess losses in every generation. “You are being summoned.” She/psychic needed me to know. “The apparition is already present.” Feel that flutter, in chest and gut. “There is something within you. Something very wrong that you must be careful of.”
She/I folded her/my knees and let legs hit the floor, the human becoming unstable. “I can offer you treatment for the next six months, a very special spiritual course where we can focus on deep healing and recalibration. I can do it for you for only $500. Consider it and call me when you are ready.”
She/I rode back down the dizzy freeway game, wins and losses at each missed exit and dodged Tesla truck. Up-high bridge graffiti and L.A. River egrets, gritty mist as alternative air, split sidewalks flowing with cashed pipes and needle caps, children’s literature scrawled on opiate-pill-trail aluminum sheets. She/I made it home to a cave on the third floor of a green building in East Hollywood. She/I tore off human ego and shook out her/my hind legs. Skin turned squalor. Her/my second head sprouted and unveiled a single eye, and body become concept, additional limbs extending from wherever she/I wished.
It cannot be a curse when it grants her/me teleportation. She/I abandoned the green building and ran the wild stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard, reclaimed and done away with: cars, shopping carts, burnt bodies on the road, strip mall auto repair shops, LAPD sentinels, shanty town blossoming by the schoolyard, stripped and stabbed corn cobs, failed fatal BBLs and discarded cc’s of botulinum toxin. Staggered collapse of tower after tower, the land’s markings no longer built or made by men.
LIQUOR STORE (∞) + CHURCH (∞) = ∞
K-Town, Chicago
G&G Liquor. Kilbourn Avenue Church of Christ. Congress Parkway Cut Rate Liquor. Jim’s Food & Liquors. Keeler Icehouse Liquors. Bethlehem Lutheran Church. Mid-Central Grocery & Liquor. Melanie’s Food & Liquor. Morning Rise Missionary Baptist Church. Jon’s Liquor. Touchstone Baptist Church. Windy City Food & Liquor. Drip Drip Drop Food & Liquors. Sunset Food & Liquor. New Life Church of Deliverance. Daily Liquors. Kostner & Madison Liquor. Good People’s Church of God in Christ. Solid Silver Liquor & Food Inc.
Florence, Los Angeles
Coco Liquor. K & K Liquor. Keg & Barrel Liquor. Slauson Liquor Mart. Joaquin’s Liquors. Dog’s Liquor. Calimex Liquor Depot. Princess Liquor. Oso Grande Liquor & Market. Ayuda Liquor. Lou’s Liquor Market. T-I Liquors. Cerveceria Market. Way Best Liquors. Village Deli & Liquor. Mt. Zion Baptist Church. First Gospel Baptist Church. Iglesia Jesucristo Universal. Iglesia De Vida. Iglesia Jerusalem. Mt. Moriah Temple of Christ. Shepard Missionary Baptist Church. Iglesia De Restoracion. Paz y Libertad Liquors. Iglesia de Roca Fuerte de Salvación.
Sandtown-Winchester, Baltimore
New Bethel Baptist Church. Frankie’s Cut Rate Liquors. Unity Methodist Church. Pak & Lee Liquors Inc. Sacred Faith Church. Celebration Christian Worship Center. Oasis African Methodist Episcopal Church. Calhoun Liquor Paradise. Coyote Liquors. Holy Harvest Baptist Church. Great Temple Pentecostal Church. United Apostolic Faith Church. Wonderworld Liquors. Royalty Liquor Store. Mulroy’s Package Liquors. Kingz-n-Queenz Liquor. Seventy Five Liquor Store. 20/20 Liquor Beer & Wine.
Fairhill, Philly
Will’s Place of Cold Beer. Tioga Square Liquor. Food & Beer. 85 Cold Beer & Deli & Wine. Good Spirits & Fine Wine. 201 Cold Beer & Liquor. G&G Liquors. Liquor Palace. Eric’s Wine & Spirits. B&O Beverage & Liquors. Road to Christ Church. Temple of Bethlehem Bible Church. Grape Vine Community Church. Nazareth Worship Center in Christ. Church of Triumph. Beloved Evangelistic Church. 5th Avenue Baptist. Jesus Christ is Lord Church.
ALL MY FRIENDS HAVE ADHD
Riqqy takes five different prescriptions, yet she still can’t sit still through a whole meal. Cass runs around the house all morning and falls asleep for four hours in the afternoons. Ajayi stays in the zone and forgets to eat and forgets to shit and forgets to shower. Freedom wants to be a lawyer and a dancer and to tend gardens and live in a cottage in West Oakland and become an Afrocentric yoga teacher for toddlers. Adé quit her job working for the NHS and bought a one-way ticket to Accra. It’s been six months since I’ve heard from either of the Martinez twins, evidence that there is a genetic link. It’s the natural brilliance masking as weird. I know that Jae has been building computers since high school. And Sean graduated from uni at 19. Maia drinks coffee to fall asleep, and when the buzz wore off on her marriage, she stuck around anyway.
Humbly, me and Ajayi met while hiking a foggy, verdant mountain in eastern Ghana, then again years later at a gallery show on 47th Street in Chicago, snow coming down all around us while we shared a cigarette and slow-drank our beers.
PROPHECY
Cherise wants me to sell her my Vyvanse. I coax her, “Come with me first to the metaphysical shop so I can get ingredients for a spell.” We’re already in the wrong neighborhood, lost on La Brea. Hot walk, cold smog hazy orange. “I’m trying to show my parents that I can work, take care of myself,” blabbers an easy mark, the 22-year owner who grew up in the Hollywood Hills. Cherise charms her while I pocket the spoils, then it’s an easy out. “Don’t feel bad stealing from these people. My mom and aunt used to clean houses around here.”
On the street, a short lady with a baby voice says, “Dios conoce todos tus pecados.
Ríndete a su voluntad y conoce la salvación.” Flower hankie on her head. Cherise and I share a spliff while waiting for the bus that will take us down La Brea to Olympic to Western to Slauson, home. She grew up in that hood and knows all the routes back. Our eyes are curling when the baby voice woman comes over to us. “My father sent me here on a special mission. but has since abandoned me. Por favor, Can you help me get home?” She removes her hankie, rips out her tongue, and wraps it inside. Gives it to me and leaves.
The bus comes and me and Cherise ride home, the gift in my lap. Across the street from our spot on 55th Street, there’s an empty lot of mostly splintered concrete. Cherise digs a hole in hard dirt and I toss the tongue in, scoop dirt over to seal it, and place a piece of black onyx on the mound. Back inside, no air conditioning. I make strawberry lemonade, forgetting that Cherise hates strawberries. “Anyway,” I tell her, “I already sold Shani my last few pills.”
