At LACMA — Split Lip Magazine

The mama mammoth is always there, knee-deep in tar, sinking. Her partner and child wait on the shore. They’re still waiting. At the museum cafe, David and I drank coffee in silence. A woman at the next table spilled latte on her chair, on the floor, on her outfit. I don’t have language for her clothes but they seemed expensive. What do I know? David didn’t vape in the Impressionists but he was outta there lickety-split. I found him blowing Honey Mellow on a Shadi Ghadirian print. “What?” David said. A burqa with a teapot for a face. Untitled. I wanted kofte, hummus, pita. I didn’t tell him. David vaped in the Hall of Jesuses. There were many rooms. Walls of flowers, nipples, bales of hay. Sickly pale European bodies. Reconstructed sets from The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. David tried running up the wall and came down heavy. A woman with a suit coat and walkie-talkie came and left. Outside, at the edge of the Tar Pit, David pulled an empty plastic bag from his pocket. He looked inside the bag as if something would be there for him and then he looked at me. The air smelled like somebody slammed the brakes. David tossed the bag into the pit. It takes a long time for things to sink in.

Matt Greene (@mattgreene88) holds an MFA from Eastern Washington and teaches writing in Appalachia. “At LACMA” is part of a linked series of prose pieces, some of which appear in or are forthcoming from the Cincinnati Review, Cleaver, Spillway, and Wigleaf. Other recent work appears in or is forthcoming from CutBank, Conjunctions Online, DIAGRAM, Moss, and Santa Monica Review.