THE UNNAMED FIRE

by Alejandro Escudé

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.

DRONES

by Alejandro Escudé

Bright lights over the evening sky near Lebanon, N.J., this month. Federal officials have said that most such sightings were airplanes, helicopters, stars or drones being flown legally. Credit: Trisha Bushey/Trisha Bushey, via Associated Press via The New York Times, December 24, 2024

In a way, I write for the drones.

Those asterisks in the sky—blown about

Over the heads of Americans craning upward,

Awakening from their electronic sleep.

Maybe this poem is a little drone, buzzing

Over the armpits of the city, shadows blending

Like metaphors and allusions pending. 

Oh Triborough night! Sophisticated stars,

Billboards tolling silently like clocks signifying

The end of another lifetime. No one knows

What they are, these drones, and at the same time

Anyone can purchase them online. But we like to say

We don’t know what they are more than the fact

That we know them as our own. Drone, 

The very word conjures up a verse simulacrum,

A swarm of contiguous phraseology, eyes

Like microphones sensing each ironic property.

I’d like to see a drone fly into a cathedral,

Buzz the altar, leaving a trail of alien scripture,

Then blend into the largest fresco, a smudge

In the faded sky, like a wet smooshed cockroach 

The size of a large pizza box. But for now,

Let’s be content to observe these melancholic

Visitors, pointing at their axis, the X and the Y,

Their orange lights bifurcating the moon, each 

Triangulated monster pulsing into the distance,

That otherworldly strangeness we crave.

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.

BONE LIGHT

by Alejandro Escudé

What else could you collect with a sphere

Surrounding a star? In the era of artificiality

And commerce, would it be evidence

Of love? Would it leave a heat signature?

I picture an alien sphere—not metallic

As supposed, but translucent, amorphous,

Twinkling an arthritic light, a series of low-

Frequency whistles. Are there ripe stars

Where you are? Rhyming citadels, chariots

Like half-eaten strawberries? Scientists

Take the pulse of time, they inherit questions

And the questions give birth to universes.

But I wonder about such a powerful warmth

And the results of the search. Is energy

Stored in our marrow? The man himself

Said it would be more a collection of objects.

Like a home? Like most journeys, it might

Prove false evidence of wonder. A god

Unwanted. Light reflected off the bus stop

Bench of a galaxy. As of late, life’s become

A chain of human wrist bones, so we must

Look up and dream of a star-engine that’ll

Reveal the fluttering eyelids of another tribe

Mining the fumes of a celestial volcano.

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.

THE ENGLISH TEACHER PENS A LETTER TO TECH CEOS

by Alejandro Escudé

An afternoon grading on the internet, I walk out

To the November skies of Los Angeles, warm,

A day moon more orb-like than usual in the east.

The sun a shining lake behind fair weather clouds.

I’m thinking of you. How you stalked us in our 

Classrooms for years, removing first our books.

Taking our grades and popping them on screens

That would never time out, even on vacations.

It’s you I blame whenever I can’t direct students

To a specific page, numbers eliminated long ago,

The corners, dog-eared, the scanning of the hand

Across print to mark a quote, to seize an argument.

But I’m a gnat on a remote beach of the economic

Planet to you staring at a sea of adolescents with 

Endless passwords tattooed on their brains. Strolling,

I spot a Yellow-rumped Warbler shadowing me along 

The side of the road. An intelligence, a god, birthed

Of the moon and sun. Buffering, my human hopes.

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.

VENICE SUN

by Alejandro Escudé

Venice has finally revealed the details for its entrance fee, making it the first city in the world to charge daytripper visitors. Starting in spring 2024, visitors to the floating city will have to pay 5 euros ($5.40) to enter on peak days if they’re not staying the night. But this isn’t a permanent move yet – the Venice authorities have committed to a 30-day “experiment.” —CNN, September 13, 2023

When you first get there—

Your ocean liner looms over 

The island city and you spot

The ancient roofs and the plazas,

The gryphons, and the gold-fringed

Streets, both real and imagined,

And the people on the cruise

Get off onto the bridges, you 

Smell the canals—leafy, oily, 

And the mask you purchase is 

Expensive, the plague doctor,

And you drink a cold beer

And you eat in a restaurant

Down a corridor, and you think

Of the writing you should be

Doing, and every corner brings 

That lifelong, exquisite guilt, 

And you sidle through crowds

And get too hot and walk

Out too far, where there are

Fewer people, only sunlight

Splashing against a cracked wall.

And you are in Venice, but

At night, it’s Euro-urban scary, 

And you’re alone and lost

And you almost miss the boat

Though the boat is docked close.

You take the tender back 

To the pastel-colored cake-boat

That is every cruise and you 

Go to the ship’s casino and sit at

The red neon bar, and you forget

That you were ever in Venice

And it’s almost twenty years

Later and you learn that now

Venice wants to charge a fee

Like an amusement park, and

It makes you sad to look at 

Your mask, hanging on your

Wall, remembering the latest 

Plague. But it makes you 

Even sadder to learn there

Will be days in that city

Where it’s not advised 

That you visit because of

Crowds. And you think:

I’d go anyway. I’d go

Right now just to smell

Those canals again. Just 

To see that palace, fringed

In gold. To feel that heavy,

Doge’s sun like one coin

Of the two that sit upon 

My aging poet’s eyes. 

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.

THE BLACK HUMMINGBIRD

by Alejandro Escudé

Why all the gray skies [in Southern California]? It's a reasonable question with a fairly complex answer that we find ourselves asking yearly when they show up and stick around for a few months. Known as May Gray and June Gloom, the period’s a sign of transition from cool winter weather to scorching summer temperatures. —LAist, May 19, 2023. Photo: Ushering in June Gloom near Santa Ynez, California on June 01, 2020. | George Rose/Getty Images via KCET.

The grayness of May isn’t subtle.

It weighs on the birds too, erasing the landmarks.

I notice that my sight changes, eyes have a stalkier bond

To the naked mind—what is that about?

I exit my apartment, crossing the threshold of my door,

And the hallway is blue, chilly, despite the seventy degrees.

I need my poetry heroes to Lazarus from their graves

And deliver me back to my old selves, the dozens of poets

That came before this one who writes only gray verse.

But its always been the black hummingbird that flitted 

Through the glass of my window at the Catholic retreat 

I attended two years after my son was born.

I obeyed the order of silence. At twilight, I made my way

Past the Victorian lamp posts along the garden paths

To the dining hall. And we prayed before and after dinner.

When I returned home, the hummingbird followed.

I ask a coworker: does the gray sky affect your mood?

It is kind of dark, he says, missing the mark.

The grayness lasts so that even the darkness of night is gray.

I shift in my rocky bed, the hours graying into more hours.

You can live this way, you know, many years,

Reading between the testament folds of the colorless clouds,

Seeking something beyond the stormy horizon 

You have come to expect—that gray, prodigious god.

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.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

by Alejandro Escudé

California's COVID State of Emergency Ends Today. What Does That Actually Mean for You? 

—KQED, February 28, 2023

Just today, I scrolled down to an old online video

I bookmarked when the pandemic hit, nothing special,

A rocker playing his guitar, an alternative melody,

A song reminding me of high school, and it brought

Me back there, not high school, but of late 2020,

When I was stuck inside, alone, feeling everyone’s

Vulnerability as though it were actually weather,

A bit stuffed up, wondering if I had it— Covid,

But sensing a kind of warmth between me and my

Students on the computer. Online school over,

I’d usually call it quits early, nobody cared then,

There was a divine feeling to all the ifs and whens.

But that was before it was done, slowly but surely,

And everything went back to rushing, metallic

Again, all expectations, societal wounds, clothes,

Shoes, no more calmness to the sky, only sharp,

Unnoticed clouds, the sun penetrating one’s eyes,

And, well, I’ll say it, the return of unkindness,

Human beings more beastly than before it happened.

So much so that you have to stop and explain,

When nothing needed explaining in those years.

On the mind, only one question: are you vaccinated?

Now we’re back to the usual demonic hairsplitting,

Conversations releasing a plume of mustard gas,  

All of us again soldiers in Great War-like trenches.

I’ve put my helmet back on, sighed, and headed 

Outdoors, negotiating the dragon-tongues, elbowing 

My way to drink from the nearly dried-up wells,

My children in tow, their eyes widened by clamor,

Greed, and the covert gore of our recovered horror.

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.

DELUGE

by Alejandro Escudé

The Los Angeles River flows at a powerful rate as a huge storm brings flooding and landslides to the west coast. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images via The Guardian, January 16, 2023

I listen to Paradise Lost

in my car as the rain pours

at night, picturing the first 

couple as they huddle among 

the grasses and fruits.

From my car window, as if 

up toward heaven, I see an

uphill rain-slick boulevard, 

passenger planes landing 

at LAX, like blurry UFO’s.

The sound is exhilarating,

an aquatic thrashing, my car

sloshing over corner oceans,

the wipers struggling to sweep

a sinless version of the city.

I roll the window down

just as Satan calls out his 

fellow seraphim, like a zillion

tuna schooling out of a 

darkened precipice. 

Even if it’s atmospheric, 

and a river, it’s still rain, 

the wind wind, the forecast?

Our fallen state, our bodies

water-logged, the reflection 

of all the lights at night

splitting heaven and hell

into equal refractions.

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.

LIGHTS OUT

by Alejandro Escudé

In 2014, Los Angeles cut its annual carbon emissions by 43% and saved $9 million in energy costs by replacing the bulbs in more than half of the city's street lamps with light-emitting diodes. That year, the Nobel Prize in physics went to three scientists whose work made those LEDs possible. "As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving the Earth's resources," the Nobel committee explained when it announced the award.... But that's not how Ruskin Hartley sees it. "The drive for efficient fixtures has come at the expense of a rapid increase in light pollution," he said. Hartley would know. He's the executive director of the International Dark-Sky Association, or IDA, and he's one of a growing number of people who say the dark sky is an undervalued and underappreciated natural resource. Its loss has detrimental consequences for wildlife and human health…. "We've taken a lot of the energy savings and just lit additional places," Hartley said. It's a classic example of the Jevons paradox, in which efficiency gains (such as better automobile gas mileage) are countered by an increase in consumption (people driving more often). —Phys.org, September 23, 2022. Photo Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

There is nowhere on the Earth left for the human being.

We’re too blue and too bright, we (how to put this?)

destroy the night. It comes to me now, the cruise ship

I was on, northern Mediterranean, lightning-streaks

across the dining room windows as we ate, Titanic scene,

the ship listing to and fro. I went out to see it, to take in 

the storm and the ship’s lights were laying like a mermaid’s

gauzy hair across the tossing waves. I’d be shamed

by many others simply for recounting this trip, mocked

for excursions, games, scheduled meals. I’d think 

of Odysseus in Sicily, duping the Cyclops, hiding his 

men beneath the curly warmth of sheep. Sometimes, 

I also want to hide that way from the weaponizing shame

humanity turns against itself—more lethal than nuclear

weapons, toxic as a leaky oil tanker. We recognize

the firelight and so does the snake, the shoreline plover, 

but we choose the incandescence of daylight at night.

I have been in the center of my worldly city, lost in

absolute darkness, unable to walk my dog, a block

away the foraging lights of shark-like airliners taking

off into the gridded coordinates of the briny sky.

Shall I leap back into my Neanderthal skin yet eschew

the Sahara rat for the naked leaf? Shall I bore into

the ground, further and further, as the rich climb 

diamond-encrusted staircases into Olympus-sized

homes? My children are not guilty of the bright light!

My planet is not above me, and it isn’t below me,

and it’s certainly not flat. I eat LED light bulbs for 

a midnight snack, looking out over the shellshocked 

tapestry, basking in the sky glow, so I may light

the places within me that don’t need to be seen.

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.

LIZARD DAYS

by Alejandro Escudé

A lizard, small, on my walk along 

the largest airport in the country,

dead, curled, fetus-like, so swift

they are as they shoot back toward

the ivy mounds. At times I imagine

how many trash bins would the 

lizards fill if they were all collected

from the overgrowth—so I take

with my iPhone a photo of him,

Cretaceous little being, extinct, 

and think about the latest warning

issued to all Apple users, a hack

where they could take control,

absolute control, the newscaster

asserts, of your phone. I yearn

for a return to those lizard days

when I couldn’t carry around

a sea of digital pirates, both legal

and illegal, a neon mind-maze,

yet enough data to assume society’s 

panoptic perch. I choose to keep 

from running another space race

with my phone, contemplate

the deadness of a dead lizard

on the sidewalk as monolithic 

shadows of planes, like the foot-

prints of a dinosaur accelerated 

in time, mesh onward to the west.

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.

SCHOOL DOORS

by Alejandro Escudé

Doors are important in schools.

That’s why when you’re a teacher

they give you lots of keys, keys

that you then have to return when 

you leave for summer break, which

is why leaving for summer break

feels so final, so like confronting

a kind of early retirement, or death.

It’s also why after twenty years

teaching English, I hate doors and

I hate keys, which feel so primitive

to me, those flecks of coded copper

that pinch your upper thigh, get stuck

in your sunglasses, become tangled

up within themselves and you have

to wrestle them free. Once, I lost

a whole set of school keys; I’d

stopped at a gas station and they

slipped out of my dress slacks.

I got home and reached into my

empty pockets, and I felt this

utter panic, my face turned cold.

I drove back and there they were 

beside the fuel pump, laying as if

waiting for me to swipe them.

I looked around and felt a welling

up of gratitude. Who could’ve

had access to this world of youth

that I was in charge of every day?

Who could’ve hurt them? I worked

at a school not long ago who often

left the back door to the gym open.

Mornings, I’d walk by and see

the door propped ajar, inviting 

anyone from off the street to come

inside, take anything they wished

from the locker rooms: gloves,

helmets, jerseys, pompoms, lives.

So I’m empathetic when I read 

about the school shooting, how  

a teacher left the door open. Then 

how it was shown she hadn’t, yet 

locked doors often refuse to stay

locked. Doors like remaining open,

they prefer to welcome others.

I’ve been around school doors

so long, I believe I can hear that 

thing screeching as the shooter 

yanked it back, the big rock 

the teacher had used to prop it 

against the grass, to one side.

And like that—nowhere to hide.

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.

HEART OF THE GALAXY

by Alejandro Escudé

The mystery at the heart of the Milky Way has finally been solved. This morning, at simultaneous press conferences around the world, the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) revealed the first image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It’s not the first picture of a black hole this collaboration has given us—that was the iconic image of M87*, which they revealed on April 10, 2019. But it’s the one they wanted most. Sagittarius A* is our own private supermassive black hole, the still point around which our galaxy revolves. —Scientific American, May 12, 2022.

It’s an engine, 

the scientists say,

a black Mustang

parked at the curb

in front of our house,

the Milky Way,

I’ve been there, 

lightless, eating up stars,

surrounded by fire

that cannot reach me,

speed of light,

the scientists say,

why the image is blurry

yet crisp

as can be,

such are the rules

we live by, the movie

inside the maelstrom,

the Papi

and the Mami,

a solitary mitt laying 

centerfield, a baseball 

tucked inside 

twirling 

as the cradle

of life in the universe spins 

26,000 light years away,

humans beings, Lucy

to the aliens, biological

Big Bang, Adam

and Eve to the bug-eyed

Greys

and the lizard man

who staggers out of an oval door

of a saucer-metallic

flying saucer,

time falling into time,

a spot on a boy’s foot,

beach tar, sound of waves,

salty air.

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.

THEY WILL SEE YOUR LOVE

by Alejandro Escudé

For Robert Bly (1926-2021)

When you passed, I entered the forest and walked further than 

I have ever walked. Beyond the shaded path, I found you in the sun.

You sang to me about the old trains that wait in the falling snow.

I took a train just like the one you rode on. There were stars,

And castles erected for me, in the valley below the dictator’s citadel.

And there, we danced dressed up as knights, like so many Don Quixotes.

No one ever came to plow us into the ground with spears as sharp as 

Inadequacy. Afterward, some drove back to the Christian hospital,

Others wept in their anxious offices. Some made it back to their home,

Where their dogs waited dutifully to be walked for a short time.

But I want to thank you for your stories. The pity and confidence,

The marginalia of dragons, and the wise women who danced

In your honor, beneath the flaming cables of industry. Poet king,

I am not going back to the misery factory, where I turned

The levers like vipers, each bite a bite for eternity. I am here for you.

You branded me with the confidence of the son. I see bonfires

Flickering beyond the forest, they have welcomed me for centuries.

They tell me, the men living there, “We see you. And we see your love.”

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.

ANGEL

by Alejandro Escudé

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Sept 29, 2021–Feb 13, 2022. Above: Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958. Encaustic on canvas (three panels), 30 7/8 × 45 3/4 in. (78.4 × 116.2 cm) overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Gilman Foundation, Inc., The Lauder Foundation, A. Alfred Taubman, Laura-Lee Whittier Woods, Howard Lipman, and Ed Downe in honor of the Museum’s 50th Anniversary 80.32. © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In the flag painting the flag

goes and is going into the flag

and it takes us with it

the flag that is into the flag 

beyond what we do when

we surf the net, as a nation

we’re a flag entering another flag

and a flag after that one. 

Jasper Johns knows this, 

or does he? You mustn’t ask

him you know. The interpretation

lags behind the artwork always

like a little girl struggling to keep up

with her father who is walking

too fast for her keep up 

but is she really unable to keep up?

The truth is leaving us, and you,

and taking a train to a new epoch

where a train will travel into

another train and another train

after that toward a sunset

that sets within a sunset and 

(you guessed it) another sunset

after that—because it was

Warhol who engineered the first

internet, an ad box for Brillo

that became box after box

after box. So Johns does too

with his flag and other things,

which is what a country is

…things.

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.

HORRIBLE

by Alejandro Escudé

‘We must demand that national leaders create a fair and humane immigration system, including a path to citizenship for immigrants, and a safe and fair asylum process for Haitians and all others seeking refuge in the US.’ —Xochitl Oseguera, The Guardian, September 28, 2021. Photograph: Félix Márquez/AP

There are horses galloping 

Within the word, horrible.

Lashing at migrants, 

Centaur on the Rio Grande.

The water parts at first 

To let in the fifteen thousand,

Refugees from Atlantis 

Who bore a hurricane, a quake. 

Children held aloft by mothers 

With earth-bare arms.

I paint the scene for you 

In poetic bronze, a cowboy

Breaking a colt in chaps 

On a corner store in Sedona.

Only this bronze is flesh, 

A border patrol agent in chaps,

Lassoing a sun containing 

The origin of language. 

Syllables like hooves, 

Ten gallon hats, and boots along

The river the color of bronze, 

Dividing a land formed 

Of bodies from the land itself. 

Congo moon, Texas slug. 

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.

SURFSIDE

by Alejandro Escudé

It looks like a frozen tsunami of ash.

And there are people in that rubble

Like fish tossed out of an old tank.

Was it made out out stiffened moths?

An engineer says it must’ve been

A column—and I’m thinking some 

Support gave way, as support often

Gives way in this country, allowing

For the sudden pancaking of people.

All oversights are finally political.

Oh crumbling moon! What must it 

Be like for the others who overlook 

The site? Am I next? Aren’t we all

In the process of collapse? Come 

Daylight, they heard the banging. 

No voices, only a nebulous banging 

Amid a jumble of metal and granite.

Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013 upon winning the 2012 Sacramento Poetry Center Award. He received a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis. Alejandro works as an English teacher, having taught at the secondary level for many years. Originally from Argentina, he immigrated to California at an early age. A new collection, The Book of the Unclaimed Dead, published by Main Street Rag Press, is now available on the MSR website. Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his dog, a feisty terrier named Jake.