Let’s all move to LA
Finishing the smug virgin, Nosferatu gets home
To stare at her dead building.
Nothing left, the town has been eaten.
For-rent signs decorate the windows,
Grass and garbage crowd each door.
He writes his broker, gothic letters in stale blood
Asking about Los Angeles and its untouched whores.
20 million people, paletas dripping desire
Served from chirping vans year-round.
He now lives in Silverlake, a Mission bungalow
A Chihuahua in his purse, two long teeth,
Each bejeweled because he is Brat.
At Akbar, a boy catches his hand and purrs
You look like Moby, zaddy, as they grind.
He goes to the nail artist Neptune
Who draws tarot cards on each claw,
Talks about how dating in LA feels extractive
Does anyone even have a job? Slashies,
Actor/waiter/freshmeat/corpse on their IG bios.
Some nights he puts on old world drag,
Jacket so form fitting it is a lover’s hug.
It still smells like the frankincense of
A priest whose blood he knelt to before in 1944.
His aura is cleared by a Westside witch,
They realize they put the Trans in Transylvania
Nonbinary now. Beyond man and monster,
Nosferatu begins a sex positivity podcast.
Weekends, they go to Bakersfield to fuck a fan.
At Buck Owen’s Crystal Palace music hums
Out line dance rhythms. They finally know home,
Chasing a boy, running screaming into the night.
I am sure you are great.
Someday your garden is going to be beautiful.
I hear the bees have opened a speculative market.
Your eye will rot into a rose and make fortunes.
Blue, green, brown, lilac, growing from skin-sock
Held together by your mitochondria from a woman
Dead 70,000 years. I see so much potential
And I don’t have time for its blooming beauty.
I am now the Grand Canyon after flash-flood rains.
CBS ran stories. Whole families, swept away;
A calming voice recounts: twenty dead, dogs
bodies floating right where we camped last night.
I keep your photo in my pocket, covered in lint,
Tobacco from the stale cigarettes I stole from a boy.
Could you imagine the story if I had been brave?
How I wouldn’t have been gone, when you asked
“What are we?”, I coulda said: “the universe is God’s dream;
I dream of you.” Instead, I waited fifteen hours to text back.
Mentioned I was busy Friday, and my throat has a tickle.
Someday we’re going to be dead. No one will know
About that kiss by the curb, LA streetlights humming
Bodies held in a moment of grinding infinity.
My hands still feel you sometimes, but here I am
White, pale, the one who already is a ghost.
Devin Fitzgerald is a curator, librarian, nonbinary ‘human.’ They organize poetry readings in Los Angeles. They are a member of the Bursky Collective. In third grade, Ben Starr insulted their hair. Someday, vengeance will be theirs.
