Radio Glenside
by Kogen Serrano
Headlamps are everywhere
in local transit tonight,
like moths drawn to moonlight
below lofty eaves.
The eucalyptic antennae of radio towers
are etched in pencil against a stucco sky,
occluding gas station radios with static dross.
Down the street from Humphrey’s Pest Control
(a termite museum with molting scrub boards
and senescent guitars on display),
Lauper’s deepsongs resound like cicada drones,
suspending long-distance sermons in mid air.
Jean-jacket Galateas
live on borrowed time,
wearing rouge lent by the same traffic lights
that glare across four-ways and parking lots.
They loiter in shop windows
and wait for a break.
Errant sirens, like emigres
from wrecks on the freeway,
nestle like ghosts under
fuel pumps and hatchbacks,
and slip between the sidewalk slabs
where icy substrata meets the prismatic skyline.
Glenside speaks for itself,
sputters,
coughs,
then falls silent.