Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

When you write almost 60 profiles of poets a year, you read a lot of poetry.

Searching for poems that make you want to read more is both joy and drudgery.

Joy when you find something that ‘clicks.’
Drudgery while you wade hip-deep through all the words that don’t sing for you.

I recently found a voice that arrowed straight toward me, strong and sure, right through the babble, only to discover that the poet had died half a year earlier – so before we even met, I’d lost another friend.

Francisco X. Alarcón (1954–2016) was born in California and grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico. Alarcón returned to the United States to attend California State University at Long Beach, and he earned his MA from Stanford University.

Our lives couldn’t have been more different. The connection is a love of words, and a respect for their power.

And a singular time of nightmare in the City of the Angels.

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L.A. Prayer

April 1992

something
was wrong
when buses
didn’t come

streets
were
no longer
streets

how easy
hands
became
weapons

blows
gunfire
rupturing
the night

the more
we run
the more
we burn

o god

show us
the way
lead us

spare us
from ever
turning into
walking

matches
amidst
so much
gasoline

___________________________________

The L.A. Riots. They began April 29, 1992, when four white L.A.P.D. officers were acquitted of all charges in the beating of black motorist Rodney King, a beating that was shown over and over again in police videocam footage on television. The verdict would have been incomprehensible, but we had seen this before.

In November, 1991, a Korean-born grocer awaited sentencing for shooting a 15-year-old black girl in the head as she turned away to leave the store after a dispute over a bottle of orange juice. The entire city saw the whole thing on the store’s security video played repeatedly on the nightly news. The grocer was found guilty of manslaughter, which could have sent her to prison for up to 16 years. Instead, the judge sentenced her to five years probation, 400 hours community service, and a $500 fine.

Five months later, my neighborhood was close to the riot’s path. For four days, we were surrounded by a ring of daylight smoke and dark-of-the-moon fires. Worried the scattered gunfire might come our way, at night we lay down on the living room floor, below the level of the windows, trying to sleep.

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