Wasted in a Special Way

She stopped the car on Beverly and ordered everyone out into an evening cooled by City of Angels’ angels, winging in. Winging in from confabs with other angels. From gossip. Angels love their chat. One angel crossed her leg over another angel’s leg, all aloft on white puffies, smoking. Everyone ordered out of the car marched around the car. The Chevy became a prophet’s tomb, Rumi’s sacred bower, trembling cedar branches. Giddy canyons of stored sun waited a distance closer than Vegas, a distance mappable. It was good to be young and loaded, to shape the air condensed with Great Mother’s tears around destiny. To hide out in the good fortune of a safe ride home where fates tangled to the windy rhythm of snores from beasts almost tamed. It is always good to be young and loaded. Something, somewhere is always good. Something, somewhere is always wasted.

Sarah Sarai’s most recent collection is That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsey Books). Her poems are in Barrow Street, The Southampton Review, Okay Donkey, Ascent, New York Quarterly, Boston Review, and many other journals. She works as an independent editor of novels, poetry, and nonfiction.