To those who go on incomplete, carrying yesterday in trembling hands.
To our neighborhood, where people crumble themselves on cigarettes and Vicodin, where street lights flicker in empty parking lots and drunks use alleyways as congregation halls.
4TH STREET EPISTLE BY ERIC A LOYA 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 47
To our neighborhood, where people crumble
themselves on cigarettes and Vicodin,
where street lights flicker in empty
parking lots and drunks use alleyways
as congregation halls, to the woman who lost
her child in womb, the grave
where another heart once beat, to the coffee
bum who chewed on a gun barrel
rather than wait for the invitation to leave,
gathered mourners to his tombstone of self-destruction
and sang the praises of his only accomplishment,
to those who go on incomplete, carrying yesterday
in trembling hands, the back alleys and boulevards
swallow us, we know we must offer our bodies
up to them, with all the aches of our muscles and the dust
of our bones. We, who wander the night air,
the liquor stores, 4th street and its neon
lights, look for anything to recognize
as our own: a crumpled coffee cup, a snuffed
cigarette, an empty prescription bottle.
ERIC LOYA
I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles and live in Long Beach. These cities have had a large impact on my writing for the same reason, I imagine, an environment influences a writer: where you live shapes who you are. These relatively prosperous areas I grew up and live in contain multitudes of contradiction. The moderately wealthy live a couple blocks from sun-baked homeless men. 4th Street Epistle was inspired by these people, many of whom struggle with watching their life yield little results and so turn to vices in the hopes of finding some form of comfort. These are my people, and they are a part of the reason I write. I’d like to give them a voice or, at least, use my voice to bring them some attention, because they are so often ignored. I’d argue that they are ignored because their suffering is unpalatable and far too common to look directly in the eye. But it’s important to engage with this type of suffering and despair. I try to do this in my writing and have older, more mature, writers to thank. The best advice I received as a young writer was “keep your feet moving”. The second best piece of advice was “whatever is wrong with your writing is what’s wrong with you”. Together, these quotes encouraged me to address difficult topics without fear, though not without a certain nervousness. It’s not easy to write about loss, depression, or failure, but if writers don’t, then there is no means to move past them into love, joy, and fulfillment.