News:
  • Women Directors 2021
  • Ma Rainey Sings the Blues with Passion and Rage
  • Kareem Tayyar and the Complexities of Joy
  • LIFE AFTER BIRTH APPLAUDS IMPEACHMENT NUMBER 2
  • Poets on Craft: Stephen Kampa and Chelsea Woodward
  • Signs and the City
  • Contact us
  • About
    • What is Cultural Weekly?
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Masthead
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions: Write for us
    • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
  • Contact us
  • About
    • What is Cultural Weekly?
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Masthead
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions: Write for us
    • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
Cultural Weekly logo
  • Film
  • TV + Web
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • Theatre
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Film
  • TV + Web
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • Theatre
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
The Poem

Tresha Faye Haefner: “I Will Arise Now and Go to Los Angeles”

By Tresha Faye Haefner on January 3, 2013 in Poetry

9

Click Here To View Comments

Tresha Faye Haefner’s work appears in various journals and magazines, including BloodLotus, Melusine, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, and Rattle.

*****

I Will Arise Now and Go to Los Angeles

After William Butler Yeats

I will arise now and go to Los Angeles
where the lip gloss is leopard print
and the eyes of women shine like jewels waiting
to be excavated from an urban jungle.

I will arise now and go to Los Angeles
where they sit on towels that have hundred dollar bills printed across the terrycloth,
and dream about coconut water and hours of easy money
they can make in their sleep.

I will arise now and go to Los Angeles
where everyone spends their Saturdays driving 40 miles an hour
around the cliffs of the Palisades,
where the windows are always open and the sun lands soft as a smile
on their tan legs and two dollar bottles of coke.

I will arise now and go to Los Angeles
where everyone walks in the surf on Venice beach
and watches the water skiers ski, and prays for a sign of dolphins,
or listens to Raga music, and eats organic pumpkin seed muffins
while someone burns incense in the breeze.

I will arise now and go to Los Angeles
where everyone can read poetry at an open mic,
or see live comedy for five dollars a ticket,
or run into a minor celebrity buying day old croissants at Starbucks
and pretend to be cool for not asking for an autograph.

I will arise now and go to Los Angeles,
where four a.m. wake up calls and want ads and asphalt
pull everyone from their beds like music.

I will arise now and go to Los Angeles
where even the homeless
are the blessed of the earth, soaking up rays of the sun, and spending their days
juggling rainbow colored hackey sacs for cash.

I will arise now and go to Los Angeles
where everyone can go to a party on a rooftop of lights
and meet a stranger with red hair, who says she’s an actress
with rose petals crushed into her pocket,
or talk to a boy who pays rent by playing songs
on his sad red American guitar,
or stop on their way home to stand outside of Mann’s Chinese Theater,
and put their feet where the stars have stood,
and watch the Magnolia blossoms open and fall like spotlights
someone is casting down for them alone.

Click Here To View Comments

TagsLos Angelespoemspoetry

Previous Story

Bernanke’s Cliff

Next Story

It’s the Audience, Stupid.

About the author

Tresha Faye Haefner

Tresha Faye Haefner

Tresha Faye Haefner's work appears in various journals and magazines, including BloodLotus, Melusine, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, and Rattle. Her poem, “A Walk Through the Parking Lot at Midnight” won the Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize from The Cincinnati Review. “I Will Arise Now and Go to Los Angeles” won the summer poetry contest hosted by Writer’s Row, and her poem, "Vermin" was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of 2 chapbooks, The Lone, Breakable Night from OutoftheBlue Poetry Press, and Take This Longing, which will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2013. Although Tresha's formal education is in psychology, she considers her true calling to be both teaching and writing poetry. She has studied with luminaries such as Kim Addonizio, Sally Ashton, Brendan Constantine, Mathew Dickman, and Eloise Klein Healy, and currently teaches private poetry workshops in Culver City and on-line, for poets both new and established. The greatest gift of her craft, she says, is not the surprising line-break, but the ability of poetry to surprise, and break open the human heart.

Related Posts

  • Poets on Craft: Stephen Kampa and Chelsea Woodward

    By Bunkong Tuon
    Poets on Craft is a cyberspace for...
  • Kai Coggin: “Trying On Your Eyebrows (for Frida Kahlo)”

    By Kai Coggin
    Trying On Your Eyebrows (for Frida Kahlo) I...
  • They Write by Night, “Trump in Hell”
    — in this episode’s poem and, elsewhere, in life

    By Suzanne Lummis
    Noir Now: Power and Corruption Sometimes...
  • Peter Neil Carroll: Two Poems

    By Peter Neil Carroll
    Hitchhiker Driving through blue-collar...

Support Our Friends

Follow Us

Join Our Mailing List

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @CulturalWeekly

Comments

  • maurice amiel maurice amiel
    A Case Against New Year’s Resolutions
    Here is an interesting new voice: candid,...
    1/14/2021
  • Matthew R. Matthew R.
    A Taste of Gypsy Boots
    Thank you Gypsy, for being brave in your new...
    1/8/2021
  • maurice amiel maurice amiel
    Bye Bye 2020 … a mute testimony
    given the events at the US Capitol of January 6th...
    1/7/2021

New

  • Never Been Suspicious Of Buying Instagram Likes? Think Again
  • One a Kind Gift Ideas For Couples
  • Women Directors 2021
  • FIVE PLUS ANDY & JERRY & MORE
  • Support the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize

Tags

art dance film Los Angeles music photography poem poems poetry tomorrow's voices today

Like us

Please Help

Donate

Who are we?

Cultural Weekly is a place to talk about our creative culture with passion, perspective and analysis – and more words than “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Our mission is to draw attention to our cultural environment, illuminate it, and make it ... read more

Site map

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact us
  • Contributors
  • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
  • Food
  • Home
  • Masthead
  • Privacy Policy/Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Submission Form
  • Submissions: Write for us
  • Subscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Thank You

Links

Adam Leipzig
Entertainment Media Partners
This Is Crowd
CreativeFuture
Plastic Oceans Foundation
Arts & Letters Daily
Alltop
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Jack Grapes
Ethan Bearman
Writ Large Press

Mailing List

* indicates required


  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy/Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Contact us
Cultural Weekly is the digital magazine and public platform of Next Echo Foundation. DONATE HERE.
Copyright © 2010-2020 by Adam Leipzig. All Rights Reserved.