you sit there in your special little nook,
like a sovereign in the universe of cakes,
you choose your seat in the back corner,
‘in an alcove at the Alcove’; you regret
thinking for a moment this was clever
of you. you sit with your little café con
leche, with your little dessert dish,
your special little saucer and your
‘platillos sucios; you hear the dumb twerp
of the register; someone else sits behind the till,
he is not attractive but his personality seems
effortless and authentic enough that you feel you
could one day be swayed otherwise;
his false (and true) sense of his own authority
is a little disconcerting, and yet you find yourself
strangely drawn to this; you sometimes wonder
about this quality in yourself – the way your love of
someone else’s grace and power and effortlessness
can surprise you; you wonder whether
you might be weird even by Los Feliz standards,
(which would still be better than normal, you think)
and now you tell yourself
the man behind the register is just okay;
sure, he is a sovereign
of cakes just like you
and, not to mention, of sausages and cabbages
and all sorts of other little items;
and so the two of you share that sweet
pleasure & secret burden; you share a cardinal
sense of pride and shame (a secret pride and a cardinal
shame? yes, you think, much better, rolls off
the tongue the way the
cakes roll the other way, if only for a moment,
even if it never lasts: the pride, the shame,
the cakes rolling on to the tongue,
the grating sound of the register that you begin to
enjoy in spite of yourself, in spite of everything);
these are the circumstances, the ridiculous props
that have become your life, all the unique yet transitory
marks of freedom and incarceration, of youth and
the daily daily
the feigned indifference-
for who else thinks such things,
each day the same
few frivolous things in so few frivolous permutations –
only a few more orders,
you hear the man behind the till saying,
his voice hoarse now and raspier than you remember,
and so you question everything all over again,
and this is your neighborhood now and you share that
also, and maybe that gives you the right –
yes, you think, so few frivolous things in so
few frivolous permutations
that always seem beyond your grasp,
so retroactive, so james dean so forty years ago
in some movie you’ve never seen but your parents
tell you you should have,
the one about a chicken-race between a couple of cars
that drove off a mountain top –
who else thinks these
thoughts, such bitter-sweet-and-simple thoughts,
formidable ephemeral and yet transcendent, so–
a moment too late, who else
other than a prisoner who has settled
for a discreet slice of caramel cake and
a daub of coffee
in the crooked back-side of a café, in this
seat, this throne of your own ridiculous choosing, an alcove –
yes, a delightful evocative name – the name suggests,
a prison, you think, and at the same time
suggests nothing,
absolutely nothing at all.
