There was a Chinese woman, clinging to a chicken leg with most of the meat and skin peeling off towards the crowd, standing there mesmerized by the store window. The rows and rows of tiny stuffed animals, Beanie Babies, all pink and gray, yellow and blue, had captivated her.
She and the chicken wing were frozen in time, facing correctly Southbound, as the street traffic, while I paced northbound to grab a bite before the lyrics descended upon me. Poets were lining the streets and the off beat, beanie clad, furry faced, multi-colored atmosphere of freak-and-unique rose from the cracks of the sidewalks Sunday.
Welcome to the North Beach Poetry Crawl of the San Francisco International Poetry Festival.
While I had tried to kneel and wait in Kerouac Alley, it turned out that I needed sustenance for my stomach first. I ran away from Chicken Leg, across Columbus, to my Trieste haven. Surely, they had a bagel for me. Or just the right desert . . .
Sadly, they did not.
I bound another block and a half for Golden Boy, the oasis I often spoil myself in, taking a Sicilian slice down quickly as a family of tourists needed my stool.
Back at Kerouac Alley, I heard the Spanish first. It was Ms. Coronado de Ecuador.
I leaned against the wall, diagonal from the mural and our reader. It was the rhythm and the power of voice, a beat that I have rarely heard live and kept my heart’s time – through the English and Spanish versions. It was a poetry painting our cruelties, our immigrants, our revolutions, our beat.
I found myself sneaking off before my two block hop home, head tall into City Lights. I found myself discovering whole new sections – a basement! – after all these years. I scanned all the books on writing, Gardener’s and other collections, absorbing what I could in that time and making small annotations in my sunflower pocket pad.
I curled up with Lerner’s Forest for the Trees, by a woman of a publishing house telling it like it is. I had How Not to Write a Novel clutched beneath it, but nearly forgot as I sped through the first half of Lerner’s words of wisdom for writers that were “Ambivalent Writer” or “The Wicked Child.” I took the truth in.
While I sat inside the shop, the new basement world of words discovered, Coronado’s lyrics echoed in, calling out North Beach, San Francisco, and the poet to create.
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