Fragrance: A South Central Los Angeles Love Poem

Ainsi l’amant sur un corps adoré
Du souvenir cueille la fleur exquise.

— Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal

( Thus the lover, from an adored body, gathers memory’s exquisite flower.)

Fragrance

…the fragrance of these forsaken streets
inhabits the forgetfulness of the setting sun
and afterward the disdain of the moonlight
whizzing through the last purple clouds
hovering over the persistent, the unforgettable
fragrance of my realm, the forsaken streets
of South Central Los Angeles.

It is there that she and I persist…

Who would have thought that that fragrance
blossomed from her
and only her?