Sunset Boulevard, by Valyntina Grenier

Prose poetry, chapbook, 20 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Sunset Boulevard casts the life of an artist in a “Hotel Ending.” Like any Hollywood adventure, there’s hitting it big, cruising the strip, crushing on and being crushed. Beyond the iconic boulevards and Santa Ana winds, Valyntina’s prose poems stay up all night to ride us around greater Los Angeles.

There’s a “post-yoga flow” to the speaker’s universal and “seemingly innocuous” moments—looking for “the last bus home” or “the movie of some year,” date nights, “dancing into a sweat.” Too, there are hints at an industry known to devour in phrases like “sex pricked through a pinhole,” “I Crawl Under this Fool. It’s Depressing” and “an oh well star.” In the words of this musical poet, “star particles, articles, watch them all, fade into day.”

Valyntina is a multi-genre artist living in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks and one full-length collection. You can find those books at Finishing Line Press, Cathexis Northwest Press and various places where books are sold. Her recent poems and visual art have appeared or are forthcoming in Cathexis, Beyond Words Magazine, Beyond Queer Words, Querencia, and Wild Roof Journal. You can find her, her visual art and links to her work around the web at valyntinagrenier.com.