utilizing Google Maps to triangulate the course of my desmadre over the years

By Viva Padilla

First start at some hospital run by nuns in East Los

Move me over to South Central
To a house built in 1910 with an 80-year-old avocado tree
Overrun by weeds
The house never changed its bones after the Northridge earthquake/ but it’s bracing itself for the Big One

The airplanes that flew over Century Blvd. always sounded closer in the rain
The freight train to Wilmington at night disrupted my sleep
My grandpa went straight to sleep as soon as he stepped on the tracks/ that train in Colima, Mexico was known to never miss a thing

An Ak-47 once killed a 8-year-old boy around 1am outside of a bar down the street from my house,
Since then i imagine angry bullets are a spatial anomaly in the spacetime continuum / there is no one ever there actually holding a gun

Dad’s last song request was time to say goodbye by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman, he said that when he fell asleep he wasn’t there anymore / he woke himself by calling my name. I was there by his side telling him what time it was/ he could feel no more pain / i swear i could feel nothing either but it wasn’t my time yet

I smoked weed on a rooftop of a converted garage in Lynwood/ shaved my head soon thereafter/ the city blamed it on the coming and going of freight trucks/ stolen panties under the seats of truck drivers/ and little cesar’s being the worst pizza because you can’t eat it the next day

In torrance, i threw a halloween party in a barn in my backyard, no one could hear it from the street/ no one lived on those streets anyway i suspected

There’s no way to know now/ one night many nights
truck bed / trying to find stars
wandered to who knows where there’s no way to now
Never found gold/ with meth heads meeting at donut shops at dawn/ 80-year-old men stuck in front of TVs at 2 o clock in the morning/ and him showing me the mustang he couldn’t put back together again/ his mom begging me to marry him as she sprays Raid all over his carpet/ wandered back out of south central who knows how

coyotes are now surrounding the car i’m in with a man whose afraid to get high/ atop a hill on the eastside/ i’m always crying/ He never cries/ i walk up the hill/ shake hands with the creatures and ask them to quiet down/ they roll their eyes/ later in silence they agree that the universe needs a balance

30 days after quarantine i leave my house/ i rolled a blunt with a tree full of mockingbirds/ and a Camaro full of Swans on the street/ me and Eva look at calla lilies etched onto a fence/ the sky is so big above us/ i dream of a house/ lawn chairs and hammocks/ to make it real

i drive back home/ park atop a hill on the eastside/ can’t see outside my studio with its one window/ a cricket is loud somewhere in the room/ can’t make pacts with creatures that won’t stay still so i sleep

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Viva Padilla is a bilingual poet and writer from South Central Los Angeles. She’s the founding editor in chief of Dryland, an independent and grassroots print literary journal. Viva’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in the L.A. Times, The Acentos Review, Cultural Weekly, wearemitú, and Every. Thing. Changes. an art exhibition by the L.A. Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Viva is a first-generation Chicana. She dedicates her work to the memory of her father and the sacrifice made by both of her parents. Follow her on social media @anotchka.