[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Ralph—

I agree with Jim that the characters form the center of my interest in this piece. I wonder if you don’t have a poem here that wants to be a short story or piece of flash fiction.
This has happened to me several times. I naturally choose poetry as my default method of expression, but I sometimes discover that the requirements of form in my poem restrict my ability to develop the piece in the direction it wants to go and prose works better.

Westwood is a very expensive and well-patrolled area of L.A. I would have been surprised to find large numbers of economically challenged people there when I last visited, but that was more than thirty years ago. I like the exotic, middle-Eastern flavor of the “whited domes, minarets,/ and palm-lined streets.”

I would like to know more about The N, “Ervin, the panhandler,” Califa, whose name seems linked to the state and the café, and the owner of the café who makes such magical donuts. As they are in the poem, they seem like portraits in a gallery. I want to see them in action, reacting to a problem. What would they do if the café were robbed, or if Califa’s abusive husband/boyfriend came to try to drag her home, for example? Or you might go “magical realism” and give the donuts a real magical power. Fun read.

Glenn