"A Good Night at the Hollywood Bowl" and "Take in the Metallic Sun"
Submitted by Jennifer Shneiderman
The Hollywood Bowl is dead. The vast parking lots are silent, the attendants sent home to join the millions awaiting unemployment checks. The dedicated Lyft area with its iPhone charging stations and white club furniture, abandoned. The police are off, preparing for protests and hunting would-be assassins. Ushers gear up for distance learning, their first college summer jobs going by the wayside. The remodeled gift shop is dark and bleak, the bank of ticket windows next door closing their shades in despair. The iconic arches of the stage beckon to an empty canyon.
This year, my friend, Penny, and I are holding tight to our elegant Hollywood Bowl picnic tradition, suspending the fear and heaviness that is 2020. We will still have zucchini and arugula with garlic-lemon dressing on my grandparents’ Bavarian china, but we will enjoy our meal, and the Bowl music, on my porch.
Before Penny arrives at my house, I set up two card tables and cover them with a white linen tablecloth. I put candles on the table and in hurricane lamps scattered around the porch and garden. I don a mask and gloves and set up plates, sterling silverware and long-stem wineglasses, adding my laptop so we can stream a prerecorded Bowl classical concert. I don’t have to worry about the weight of my picnic basket this year, and I replace a little silver Charles Rennie Mackintosh-inspired holder with a large Waterford crystal vase that sparkles in the candlelight. The Bowl is located in Bolton Canyon and is managed by Los Angeles Parks and Recreation. No risk of a forest fire and no scrutiny from the Bowl forest rangers this year.
Penny arrives with a cooler containing the salad fixings and wine. This year, instead of making do with a Ziploc bag, she can use my large bowl and tongs to do the tossing. She doesn’t drink much of her rosé so she can avoid using the bathroom. We have an unspoken agreement that she won’t enter my house. We both wear masks and gloves while prepping the food and there are large bottles of hand sanitizer at the ready. We sit on opposite sides of my small porch and stream “Gustavo and Friends at the Hollywood Bowl” on public television. Penny remarks that we can chat during the show without getting shushed.
When the show is over, we appreciate that we don’t have to wait a long time for the crowds to thin before we can exit. Penny packs up her cooler and bids me good night. We put on our masks and we don’t hug. I watch her get in her car and drive away. It was a good night at The Hollywood Bowl.
***
Take in the Metallic Sun
Beverly and La Cienega
city corner street theatre
gone quietly grim.
Beverly and La Cienega
ground zero for the mundane
overwrought consumerism gone amok
a dinosaur mall
a gas station
a BevMo!
Angelenos dart in and out of contactless pickup poInts
tunnel vision even more pronounced.
Beverly and La Cienega
a hubcap hammered and cut
formed into a sun
wrapped around a telephone pole
a dandelion in the sidewalk
a little piece of humanity breaking through
watching, reflecting
utterly constant.
Beverly and La Cienega
art is all around
hiding in plain sight
within a one block radius in
Spanish Revival archways
children’s chalk drawings
sleeping dogs
portal windows
a riot of pink bougainvillea.
Beverly and La Cienega
will be there
when the quarantine lifts
the metallic sun, the city, the art
will rise, illuminated.
Let it shine
take it in.
Jennifer Shneiderman is Licensed Clinical Social Worker living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now, The Rubbertop Review, Writers Resist, the Poetry in the Time of COVID-19, Vol 2, anthology, Variant Literature, Bright Flash Literary Review, Wingless Dreamer, Trouvaille Review, Montana Mouthful, the Daily Drunk, Sybil Journal, Unique Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Terror House, Thirteen Myna Birds, Potato Soup Journal, Awakened Voices, GreenPrints and The Perch. She was the recipient of an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Laura Riding Jackson poetry competition.