Poet Louise Mathias

This past weekend was the annual Los Angeles Times Book Festival, in fact its 30th anniversary. I attended both days, listened to a number of poetry readings, and picked up some interesting books (as if I needed more). I liked the poems of Louise Mathias that she read from her collection, the hauntingly named What If the Invader Is Beautiful. Here is one of her intriguing desert poems:

Bombay Beach

You know someone, somewhere.
A collection of knives, linoleum, unfortunately.

There’s a room now in the chest,
Comprised of a secretive clock—

clock in, clock out. The blonde

unfastens the strap,
sorry human noise

divorced
of song, unlatched now in the palms,

cocaine and ridicule,
but also, love, also.

Below is a picture I shot at Bombay Beach, on the polluted shore of the Salton Sea, when my brother and I visited last year.