after reading hemingway

Los Angeles could be Paris
if only we let it;

we are not the Lost Generation
but other generations
are convinced that we
are, in some way, lost;

instead of two pencils,
a sharpener, and a notebook
we travel with computers,
A/C adapters, iPods;

is it so wrong of me–
or worse, pretentious–
to have wished so not-so-secretly for
simple half-starved days
begun with mornings
writing over coffee in a café,
the security found in the
sound of pen scratching
paper scratching poems
scratching stories scratching
my piece of history permanently
onto the ultimately impermanent?

And then I see:
Los Angeles has been
a sort of Paris–
a Paris for young
brown refugees’ children;

we who speak American
English more easily
than the language of our
parents;

we sculpt
a language for
ourselves,
carve it with
our voices,
exhale stories with
vodka-laced cigarette breaths,
our poems are grayed by smog;

no, this is not Paris
and we are not lost

this is our Los Angeles
we are making it.