California: Lee Herrick

Lee Herrick is the poet laureate of California, serving since 2022.

Photo: Curtis Messer

My California

Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit,
the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens,

graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window
table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi.

Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano
poet whose songs still bank off Fresno's beer soaked gutters

and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California
we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy

you'd know we'd done this before. In Fresno, the bullets
tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day.

In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace.
In my California, you can watch the sun go down

like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant
twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes,

red onions and the good salsa, wine and chapchae.
Here, in my California, paperbacks are free,

farmer's markets are twenty four hours a day and
always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them,

the priests eat well, the homeless eat well.
Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown,

everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown,
everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy.

No internment in the Valley.
Better history texts for the juniors.

In my California, free sounds and free touch.
Free questions, free answers.
Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.

from Gardening Secrets of the Dead. Copyright © 2012 by Lee Herrick, published by WordTech Communications LLC.

Featured music:

"Just a Thought" | Indigo Days | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
"Swiss Cheese" | Sugoi | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
"Duster Buster Blues" | Martin Klem| Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Fresno: A City Reborn | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTS_LLJvcw
Life in the Central Valley of California | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NIHSKkya28
”21st Poet Laureate Inaugural Reading: Juan Felipe Herrera” | Library of Congress | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwzgVyqYrVU&t=1348s
”Philip Levine Gives Inaugural Reading as U.S. Poet Laureate” | Library of Congress | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku-1okyplds&t=2539s