when I look at all the throw-ups in los angeles

I think about how the first time

you taught me tagging we went out back behind ********** and you let

me use your 15mm forest green Krink mop marker to write

whatever I wanted on a piece of cardboard we pulled from the dumpster

and after I practiced a while and figured out a name and style I liked

(and after I studied all of the tags around me in Des Moines

like ZERO, KOBE, DEATH, YUOME, and FORTY)

we’d go out downtown on warm humid summer days at sunset

wearing black leather shell-toes and baggy blue jean shorts and tag in

iridescent chrome dripping letters and multicolored solid paint streaks

things like dumpsters, windows, concrete beams, parking meters, electric boxes,

signs, signposts, sewer plates, railroad tracks, doors, mirrors—

KALO

ROMA

—and it wasn’t just this that was great but

it was how we’d do all that and go to the skatepark after to meet up

with Sam and Liam who’d bring Black & Milds and forties of Miller

High Life and we’d stay there until after the lights turned off

and smoke a couple of bowls down by the river and dance to

underground drum & bass artists only we knew like Casper

McFadden and Klaus Veen (and it was at delirious times like these,

high, drunk, with me ruminating about serendipity and determinism

and how Earth is a minuscule mote of cosmic dust that I think

you may have begun to understand what I was saying about Buddhism)

and now I look outside my apartment window and see a homeless

man with a beard and no shirt and no shoes staring at a yellow flower

and recall the homeless people we’ve talked to outside of Quiktrip

at 2 AM and at the library—definitely tweaking on meth or speed—

do you remember meeting Georgia? he was a real nice

person his tag was DGK

Henry Romain was born in Wyoming and grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. Indulgent in art and philosophy, he is acutely skeptical of modern societal norms. His favorite poets are Allen Ginsberg and E. E. Cummings. In his free time, Henry can be found leading trips for the USC Climbing Team, practicing a sun salutation, or sitting cross-legged in meditation.