Desire in L.A. by MARTHA CLARE RONK

Pull away from the map of the mind sprawls

over the whole of city streets, L.A. extends

our own errands and where we have to get to, you

are far away, left at corners where one awning tears

in the once-a-year wind, where the wind blows

the trees as we stand over the open grave,

the one we love; planes taking off from the airport.

Waves turn to go out to sea,

a whole city expanding like the universe,

each drive up canyons, each centrifugal wind reaching

beyond what used to be the limits of a city

and none of us can stop

pushing beyond our time, our money, the need

for some outskirts of a city already wholly outskirts,

reaching for, like erotic desire, the nether parts.

Mannered fingers and necks elongate beyond themselves,

skin hurts drying in the wind,

and waiting to find transparent expansion

into the upper reaches of not even belief,

but craving our own unbelief

and that image of another’s skirt

lifted by the warm, slightly soiled air of an open grate.

From “Desire in L.A.: Poems” (University of Georgia Press: $14.95; 0-8203-1175-8, cloth; $7.95; 0-8203-1176-6, paper; 90 pp.). Ronk has published her work in American Poetry Review, Temblor, Hudson Review, Southern Review and other literary quarterlies. Born in Cleveland, she is a professor of English at Occidental College. 1990, Martha Clare Ronk. Reprinted by permission of University of Georgia Press. Photo Max Yavno. From the book jacket.