Danilo Marin
Hollywood Forever
Whether to belt out her signature trill
or warn me of an approaching marauder,
the mouth on Yma Sumac’s bust is agape
and so am I. We are not quite lovers, but she is
the tragic heroine and I am Orpheus
orphaned by the semblance of proximity.
I read the entries in the guest book
at the Judy Garland Pavilion. Daniele, from Italy:
You were too good for this world, Judy.
I don’t sign, but walk out instead to the peacocks
roaming the grounds unbloomed
and the faint thrum of a gardener’s golf cart.
I am in search of Toto’s life-sized statue,
which should be nearby. I consult the vlogger
who recorded a guided tour of the cemetery.
Out of respect for the dead, I watch
her video with captions, like a silent film,
to no avail—I am terrible with directions.
On my way out, I amble past a bronze cherub
testing its balance on one leg atop a fountain,
presumably uninsured. The oxymoron
of immortality, like how in English
pantheon is the sum total of deities
while in my parents’ Spanish panteón
is any old gravesite. Like how thousands
of miles from their hometowns, merely blocks
from the freeway, this is where the gods choose to die.
My thoughts interrupted by a commotion,
I ask a man walking past me what’s going on.
He says they’re filming a new episode for a cop show
on CBS, questions if I’ve heard of it—I have.
Near the entrance, I notice a woman
kneeling over a gravestone, gently
setting down a vase of red carnations.
Unaware of the production around her or the camera
of my eyes, this almost looks like real life.
Danilo Marin reads “Hollywood Forever”
Danilo Marin is a Nicaraguan American poet from Miami. He was a finalist for the Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award at the University of Michigan, where he received his MFA, and the Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer Fellowship. His work appears in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Interim, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.