Now, this summer draft, a hot cough spreads down the corridor where faces pop
against the windows.
We are these wide-seeded teeth, the pock-marks, the goose faces,
consuming things from their cubby holes.
Things out near the welcome mat, things that cling to plastic nails picking at pineapple pieces.
Get them on the corner near the Sunday Best, Quinceanera,
and sex shops,
right by the Señore skinning mangoes,
right by the mayo smothered corn-cobs,
and the season-salted cucumber cups,
don’t forget the 2-dollar shoes
handed out by beautiful hands.
Here the thongs sling alongside the baby suits,
hung up next to one another, buy them right after each other.
And that song that’s playing, what does it say again? The hit of it like the
vendor’s pitch:
Beebee guns! Beebee guns!
Beebee guns!
Beebee guns! Beebee guns!
Beebee guns!
The heavy afternoon poured through the mouth
of a thick woman
curved like a hamper of wine:
what a what a what a
what a
for 1 dolla
what a what a what a what a
for 1 dolla.
Rack a sigh with the Alley.
Rack a sigh in the hollow.
Scuddle down the crevice on Olympic Street,
where the loud white
roars away.
Could this lady
rub the fire we smell?
She shuffles in polyester capris
from the salon—her flammable mane,
a new corona.
She emits a certain heat
that men follow with wet eyes,
and tongues that lunge
toward the smoke, that wag
to the kindle of her hips. They sure are weary
of this chimera, of the ever-changing
woman, bold against the whirl,
the mudded-up yellow street.
Don’t forget the singing life
bought in the flower bazaar!
The Yucca buckets drop bulbs
against the screaming
trumpets of daffodils
that hark out to the Protea—
As I quickly pass, I ask:
Will, I too, burst into flames?
It’s all in this lush grace,
you get for life, strongly
like the gush of a swooping swallow
in a tree you can buy.
A tree! A baby tree!
But it isn’t spring anymore.
The mart sells wilder races
that still trace The Valley.
These flowers are wrapped
in the funny pages.
Sorrel, and Sea Lavender, and Mustard
bundled together,
stray leaves behind.
In the street heat,
linens dry slow
to a truer
red and blue and
yellow. Flags for the
huddle families
over the crock-pot.
This cloth matters.
This cloth covers
the tables we eat off.
Strung along the gorge of the Alley,
these frayed flags
cinch the passage closer.
Wade underneath the laundry lines
and slip through the crowds
between shoulders like a sylph.
Sweep up the sawdust
from that turned over dumpster,
the trash heaps,
a rat crib.
The homeless
careen for the moon:
linger against storefronts,
pass through the fabric mart at closing,
and ask, “May I wrap myself in your cloth?”
What answer do you give,
but material, the apricot silk hanging high in the warehouse,
in hopes that it is more than just apricot silk,
but warmth for the supine men and women.
Now, the silked lost ones,
grouped on stoops, splayed on the cement,
strewn with what might be rosemary and daisy, and fennel flowers.
“Address to Santee Alley” won the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Prize in 2011.