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A command performance.
My daughter, a cultural anthropologist,
demands I take a quick ride
on our new Gold Line, from suburbs
to central LA, off at the art deco
and mission-style train station,
as if, I muse, they were one
art form. This, an adventure
from my sculpted world of silver-only
cars, little black cocktail dresses.
Kiosks call. Tacky eye treats.
Slick foil-finished ukuleles,
clay piggy banks brushed
with royal and red daisy strokes.
Faux Brighton bags and Chanel
totes hang near egg cartons
filled with tiny tin Milagros.
At a cart on wheels I buy a churro
boiled in oil, thick and hot enough
to suffocate any microbe. That day
some women clutch dolls
with clay heads, lace crimped
and glued onto chairs in which they,
unlike babies, sit upright like T-squares
wearing folded-foil crowns set
with plastic-cut jewels. In a store
cluttered with painted tin mirrors
and garlands of chilies, one girl,
nearly a grown woman, buys
such a doll, unclothed. Its skin
the color of mocha latté, she runs
her finger along its arm and cheek.
She would make its garment,
stitch sequins and braid on satin,
place the tiara like a halo on painted
porcelain curls. My daughter
once crocheted a skirt of variegated
purple, an uneven hem. She wore
it with a flower more pasty
papier-maché than silk, behind her ear.
My mother hated that I let her go
to school looking like that, her panties
visible through loose stitches,
her vulnerability disguised only by cheap,
looped yarn. I revisited a booth.
Se vende batiste blouses tied with green
and yellow string, muslin skirts
embroidered with coarse yarn, red, blue, purple,
orange. I admired their bold stitches, colored
like paper placemats crayoned by toddlers. I drank
a horchata, ricey-sweet, ate triangles
cut from a watermelon with a pen knife
by a boy with dirty fingernails sitting on a curb
near the Mission Nuestra Señora Reine.
A straw hat, its brim decorated with crepe
paper poppies, bright as this faux Mexican
day calls to me. Perhaps, next visit,
I shall buy one and wear it the entire day.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place, has won various awards, including The Reviewer's Choice Award. Her second book, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, is creative nonfiction, and was voted among the top 10 best reads for creative nonfiction by Preditor and Editors. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poems have appeared in national magazines, anthologies and review journals. She speaks on Utah's culture, tolerance, and other subjects, and has appeared on TV and hundreds of radio stations nationwide. She is an instructor for UCLA's Writers' Program. She loves to travel and has studied writing at Cambridge in the United Kingdom, Herzen University in St. Petersburg, RU, and Charles University in Prague. Her website is: http://carolynhowardjohnson.com.
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