View of the 405 Freeway
The cormorant is a field note.
We hunt it down, but in the interference of the night
We are all so afraid, mostly of our own thought
Which heightens sometimes into poetry.
Rubberized, the world cries in sync. Cycles of money.
Even if you were to grant them wash basins
Full of gold coins, they would want to know the growth.
My daughter looks at her old hamster. She feeds it
Little pebbles of food. Night comes.
I can feel America slipping off my shoulders.
George Washington stands somewhere immortalized, alone.
There’s a view of the 405 freeway which I love, nearby.
From a local mall, high up, you can see the cars
Whizz by, going south toward the airport.
So close to the speed, you feel as when you first sat close
To professional baseball players.
You almost couldn’t believe they were real.
Alejandro Escudé is the winner of the 2013 Sacramento Poetry Center Award. His first collection, “My Earthbound Eye,” will be available September 2013. Alejandro is originally from Argentina. He is a high school English teacher and lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two kids. For more poems and information, please visit alejandroescude.com.
Untitled, with Passengers 
Funny how speed slows at a distance, no? Almost like you could reach out and hold it, going by. Well done.
This is a very fine poem. I especially like the phrases “interference of the night” and “rubberized, the world cries in sync.” Although I live in Boston, I grew up not far from the 405, and this poem elicits both a sense of mildly surreal loneliness, and something tinged with impossibility, and unreachable-ness. Where are all those cars going? Why?