Nerys Williams

Canter’s Starstruck Diner, L.A.

All we recall are the stuccos on the wall
and lighting in glass leaves overhead.

We move towards the telescope of tin
the short man nestles under his eye,

he knows the telephone directories
of starlets that passed by

the incandescent blue
to no-hope gin.

My friends have the confidence of
Californian Jays,

police their love of scripts and film
with fire alarms and parking lots.

Our man takes a bow
and tells us how

the epic flew to far-flung sets
and Westwood vignettes.

Everything is coming up Vine and Rose
he cries

All the president’s men
will receive while they can

the purple hearts and cellophane seals
of the re-routed wheels.

While my commerce continues
in the dedication of dreams,

I will give you a tablet of stone
to trace a long way home

not Rosetta, it will tell
the weather of signs.

How grenades can be made
to protect those most afraid,

following the brace of
burlapped squirrels to a habitation.

Indeed a human habitation
without climate change.

Nerys Williams won the Ted McNulty Poetry Prize, and her first collection, Sound Archive (Seren Books, 2011), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her poems and critical writings have been widely published.

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