I’m not one for occasional verse, but here’s a Valentine to Los Angeles.

It was always there for me. Waiting in the dark. Three words like an incantation. A readymade poem. Each time I drove north on Western, a silent recitation: Sunshine Liquor Tae Kwon Do. Sunshine Liquor Tae Kwon Do. Not so much the contents of a mini-mall, but an ode to Los Angeles itself. I vowed to use those words somehow. I would harness their natural rhythm, though there seemed little I could add to their perfection. As I approached the corner of Western and Beverly, the old excitement gripped me. Sunshine Liquor Tae Kwon Do. My talisman. My delight. It would be soon. Past the church. Past the trophy store. Suddenly it blazed before me in the oily, starless night. The lit box of the sign had broken in places, exposing the bright tubes beneath. Oh. Liquor then Sunshine. No matter. Syntax didn’t change the purposeful march of the syllables–two and two and. I stopped at the third line.Tae Kwon Do had become a ghost, a wound. It flickered there beneath a single hand-lettered obscenity: ZUMBA.