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Dozens of beachfront homes in Malibu were destroyed overnight in the Palisades Fire on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025 (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) |
The hills were there, lichen green, and I felt the small
ferocious animals scurrying inside of it. The coyote ever-present,
ready to pounce on the owners’ three Shih Tzu. Sometimes, we’d
housesit, and I’d lounge on the front yard overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
It was as if I could dip a toe in the sea from that cliff, the ruffled white curve
as it wound north toward Malibu, an emerald land too close to call distant.
Now that street has turned ash gray, only the outlines of the lots remain,
that same coast like the edge of a puddle of spilled black ink. I recognize
the people who were caught in their cars, cars that were later plowed
to make way for fire engines and ambulances. The wind spoke in vowels
the night before last across my humble balcony that faces those smoky hills.
The sudden clanks. Buffering curtains. The canyons siphoning destruction.
One could imagine the homes as graves. Ash-people holding on to one another.
In ancient times no machine could whisk them away to safety. A volcano
of wind, torrent of melted metal. What powers do the digital towers have?
What future awaits those of us who traverse this playground of film and filth
and indifference, negotiating the enchanted brutality of this hardened city?
One can read the scroll of the flames; they speak a crackling language,
letters made of embers. It rages on, the unnamed fire, it wraps itself
in the gales. A migration begins along an avenue of burning palm fronds.
Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
