WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD


	five dollar coffee, two dollar therapy,
	blue bus, gold line, blue pills, Hollywood sign

	Disney's mousetrap behind Orange Curtain
	the future of western civilization is uncertain

	Echo Park and overpriced artists studio
	after Mi Vida Loca goes to video

	thrift turned vintage, bottle of water as third appendage
	brownstones in Bel Air, Oxycontin cocktails

	street merchants of Venice, tattooed arms like black licorice
	shaky beachfront property, make your first mil at thirty

	Bloods, Crips, La Raza, and Yo Momma
	leaf blowers and star fuckers, botox parties, power yoga, pilates

	sweet sixteen silicone implants
	pre-nup signed at next off ramp

	valley of dildos, backyard beat-offs
	strip-mall gang bangs, designer handbags

	bejeweled cell phones fake rhinestones
	sigalert on the 405, Amber alert on the 105

	Scientology and ECT, surfs up in P.V.
	white collar screenplays written on weekdays

	show your ass crack, be a star
	and starve starve starve

	The Standard, The Mondrian, The Château Marmont
	Melrose, Mel Ramos, sado-masochism as art

	Chinatown, Downtown, Koreatown
	troubles come not in ones or twos but in battalions

	take the 210 to the 134 to the 101 to the 5 to the 10 to highway one
	the Pacific Coast, the golden hour, the smoking gun

	Armine Iknadossian


--
Armine Iknadossian was born in Beirut, Lebanon and raised in Pasadena,
California.  She received her BA from UCLA and an MFA from Antioch
University Los Angeles. She has just completed her first manuscript,
Gnosis. Publications include Pasadena City College's Inscape, UCLA's
Wisteria, Cal State Northridge's Edges, Lounge Lit: An Anthology of
Poetry and Fiction by the Writers of Literati Cocktail and
Rhapsodomancy and zaum. "The Return" was a finalist in Backwards City
Review's annual poetry contest.