Sightlines: Views of The 405
I.
Beyond the intersection, in the shadows
of the underpass: concrete and patchy grass
where homeless citizens in T-shirts and shorts
pack up bedrolls, break down tents. Small and slow,
they move through The 405’s immense columns
like acolytes departing from a drab temple.
A squad car rolls toward them.
You turn your eyes to the glittering road instead.
II.
You, in new sunglasses,
drive into the morning’s electric rays. Swerve
toward the onramp, green light yourself, accelerate
exuding main character energy,
cross lines, pass Beemers and Audis,
climb. The city blurs like a zoetrope.
From the stereo, your soundtrack purrs
on The 405: you, heading true north.
III.
An Angeleno and her car
are one.
An Angeleno and her car and The 405
are one.
IV.
Mountains: patient. Sky: suggestive.
Mingling with the ever-present absence where,
to clear Sepulveda Canyon for The 405,
we demolished Time and
stranded animals on urban islands
mid-century. Two million years of articulation,
the weather’s work, bulldozed in two laps around the sun.
Yet Time persists
in fossiliferous Jurassic slate above retaining walls,
Time converses with clouds and
waits for revenge to slide toward us during winter rains.
Meanwhile pumas, coyotes, and deer wander
through dense underbrush, over
rocky outcrops to The 405’s
edge but cannot cross.
V.
You monitor your enemies:
the black SUV, that mobile pet salon.
Now stopped at zero,
the speedometer glares,
the clock ticks. For miles,
gripping the wheel, you are one
of many waiting to advance.
Over The 405, the sky births choppers:
audible but unseen. Mobile pan-opticons,
they circle and whirr,
watch you from the heavens
or command center screens.
VI.
Red. A hillside of red: taillights
transform to red Radio Flyer wagons.
Windows, roofs dissolve and
the drivers become fat kids, skinny kids,
pimply kids, kids with crazy braids grinning,
charging forward to reach the hill’s crest
where they, red wagon by wagon, fly
down the slope, squealing with delight.
Laughter rises from The 405.
VII.
All day it was evening rush.
At the offramp’s end,
in Chivas T-shirts and sweat-streaked baseball caps,
naranjeros hustle, weave between lanes
of stopped cars exiting The 405
to surface streets. They and you
are smiles to eyes at your windshield
with their bright bags of citrus fruit held high
like winners of the World Cup trophy
or the Statue of Liberty.
VIII.
Under a scythe-shaped moon,
a puma sprawls on the roadbed
altar of The 405.
Head twisted, bloodied, he cannot move.
Thousands of cars zoom past.
Catherine Fletcher is a Virginia-based writer. Recent work has appeared in Tears in the Fence, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Angel City Review, and the Creature Conserve/Goggleworks Center for the Arts exhibition Re-Inhabiting Conservation. She was a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellow (2022) and a Creature Conserve Mentee (2022-23). She serves on the Seven Cities Writers Project’s Board of Directors.
I.
Beyond the intersection, in the shadows
of the underpass: concrete and patchy grass
where homeless citizens in T-shirts and shorts
pack up bedrolls, break down tents. Small and slow,
they move through The 405’s immense columns
like acolytes departing from a drab temple.
A squad car rolls toward them.
You turn your eyes to the glittering road instead.
II.
You, in new sunglasses,
drive into the morning’s electric rays. Swerve
toward the onramp, green light yourself, accelerate
exuding main character energy,
cross lines, pass Beemers and Audis,
climb. The city blurs like a zoetrope.
From the stereo, your soundtrack purrs
on The 405: you, heading true north.
III.
An Angeleno and her car
are one.
An Angeleno and her car and The 405
are one.
IV.
Mountains: patient. Sky: suggestive.
Mingling with the ever-present absence where,
to clear Sepulveda Canyon for The 405,
we demolished Time and
stranded animals on urban islands
mid-century. Two million years of articulation,
the weather’s work, bulldozed in two laps around the sun.
Yet Time persists
in fossiliferous Jurassic slate above retaining walls,
Time converses with clouds and
waits for revenge to slide toward us during winter rains.
Meanwhile pumas, coyotes, and deer wander
through dense underbrush, over
rocky outcrops to The 405’s
edge but cannot cross.
V.
You monitor your enemies:
the black SUV, that mobile pet salon.
Now stopped at zero,
the speedometer glares,
the clock ticks. For miles,
gripping the wheel, you are one
of many waiting to advance.
Over The 405, the sky births choppers:
audible but unseen. Mobile pan-opticons,
they circle and whirr,
watch you from the heavens
or command center screens.
VI.
Red. A hillside of red: taillights
transform to red Radio Flyer wagons.
Windows, roofs dissolve and
the drivers become fat kids, skinny kids,
pimply kids, kids with crazy braids grinning,
charging forward to reach the hill’s crest
where they, red wagon by wagon, fly
down the slope, squealing with delight.
Laughter rises from The 405.
VII.
All day it was evening rush.
At the offramp’s end,
in Chivas T-shirts and sweat-streaked baseball caps,
naranjeros hustle, weave between lanes
of stopped cars exiting The 405
to surface streets. They and you
are smiles to eyes at your windshield
with their bright bags of citrus fruit held high
like winners of the World Cup trophy
or the Statue of Liberty.
VIII.
Under a scythe-shaped moon,
a puma sprawls on the roadbed
altar of The 405.
Head twisted, bloodied, he cannot move.
Thousands of cars zoom past.
Catherine Fletcher is a Virginia-based writer. Recent work has appeared in Tears in the Fence, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Angel City Review, and the Creature Conserve/Goggleworks Center for the Arts exhibition Re-Inhabiting Conservation. She was a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellow (2022) and a Creature Conserve Mentee (2022-23). She serves on the Seven Cities Writers Project’s Board of Directors.
