Mecca
Mecca is very efficiently used as a metaphor for either a pilgrimage toward something life-changing or the life-changing event itself. The pilgrimage concept usually conveys a journey that is a great struggle, but worth it because of the destination. California freeways are not typically associated with this metaphor because the struggle is great and the payoff often reciprocal, but the author is here painting the metaphor purely in abstract terms of the escape, suggesting that any destination is Mecca by comparison with the displaced, poverty-stricken home the expanse of concrete trails:
“Driving the San Bernadino is the closest I get to Mecca.”
AIDS
“Conquering Immortality” is a poem about living in with the death sentence of AIDS on the death row of Hollywood. While it also contains an essential backstory about the speaker and a symbolic focus on Egyptian afterlife rituals, it is mostly about wasting away:
“I look like the city,
only bare bones of what I used to be”
Homosexuality, Incest and Hunger
The short story “Indulgences” is about the disturbed cousin of the narrator’s mother. The narrator is recalling the larger story about Evelyn in which one part involves her attempt to seduce him as a young boy already tellingly confused about his sexual preference. The result is an awkward mess of incest and homosexual uncertainty made all the more traumatic by the predatory hunger with which the seduction begins to unfold:
“Evelyn looked deep into my eyes, as if to devour a cream pastry.”
Rebellion
The narrator of “My Aztland: White Palace” makes a confession that in the right hands of people with the wrong motive could become quite dangerous. The motivation would be misguided, of course, especially were the confession taken entirely out the context of the narrator’s history. Put into context, confession is far more fascinating, especially considering the detached alienation implied by the choice of metaphorical language:
“Like a disease-ridden blanket, revenge was on my parents, to be gay and not speak Spanish.”
Ambiguous Clarity
A metaphorical image commences the poem “Bordertowns.” It is a very nicely constructed image, but the metaphor somehow refuses to pay off. The meaning is unclear and the ambiguity is bothersome. Still, that doesn’t seem to matter; the image is enough and once formed, impossible to forget:
“The wind is a black bird
in her hair, long
as the fresh asphalt drive.”
