Rain in Los Angeles

makes you think

about all the lives

you don’t lead,

the times you didn’t

move somewhere

with four seasons,

of girls who wanted

you to follow them

back to northern

ancestral homes

or jobs in fashion,

of your parents

wishing you lived

around the corner

for Sunday games

and the inevitable

withering of limbs.

 

Rain in Los Angeles

isn’t why you’re here,

shut up in an aging

apartment that costs

half your paycheck,

verging on marriage

counseling, nursing

a third vodka soda,

coming to know

that your job is rigged

to implode just when

you will need it

to give shape to the choices

you’ve failed to make,

succeeding only

at convincing yourself

that the rain will pass

before you wake up.

Daniel Pecchenino lives in Hollywood and is on the Writing Program faculty at the University of Southern California. He is the Reviews Editor of Dialogist, and his work has been featured in The Los Angeles Review, The Hawai’i Pacific Review, Southern Spaces, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Journal, and other publications.