whales.

Looks like Hillary will win California on Super Tuesday. It matters to her because it’s the most populous state. The red cursive of its name doesn’t hide all that extra blank space on the hundreds of license plates passing on the right. Los Angeles has more Bulgarians than any other city outside Bulgaria. Ethiopians too, and Samoans, Cambodians, Armenians, crossing trenches, fault lines, double yellow lines without noticing. They’re just the letters of a word on white plates now. I’m still a yellow landscape and hot air balloon.

Initially, cell phones can feel ice cold to a face, despite radioactivity. It’s a corporate trick. Bush could be x-raying our brains in a special Verizon deal. My horn doesn’t work, so I talk to the cars. They can’t hear me, so I talk to Pamela. Her rasp warms my ear with a promise to cancel four overdraft fees. Pen in hand, knee on wheel, phone on shoulder, one car per green. Colliding with a Toyota Tundra would be bad news. If they can off-road on an iceberg in Irkutsk, they can grind through my tin can shell. General Motors bought out LA’s trolleys so that I could die alone to the Bank of America theme music’s forty-second loop.

I looked into getting the whale plate. You have to pay $50 a year. Some of Arnold Schwartzenegger’s cars are hybrids. I bet he shelled out for the whale plate and that it automatically deducts from his debit account.

The whale’s tail is overfilling. Vibraphones and trumpets are the new trolleys. Seahorses with little clam castanets and swanky air bubbles. Pamela rides in on a manatee. Sorry, there are no vegetarian whales, she explains. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

I can’t remember how I felt about the blankness when I first moved here. Was it a compromise? A stand-in for grey? The more ice cubes that plop into a glass, the more its contents rise. Whales don’t know this. Whales have never been ripped off on their gin and tonic or lived in Sacramento.