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Free verse poem about the October quake
I SURVIVED THE WORLD SERIES EARTHQUAKE OF '89
Yeah yeah the earth moved for me too.
Just another one of those things that God yes God
Hath willed into motion to flip us right spang out.
Not that that's the point.
We talk about it.
Closure?
As if terror were a problem to be solved,
As if an equation could describe a process,
With a neon equals sign somewhere near the middle to grab
Like the hanging bar on a bus
To steady us against all this flux and hoo-hah? A safe idea?
Fat chance.
There was death but mostly it was televised,
Not co-workers and best friends.
It was only The Pretty Big One,
Maybe we needed to be told.
Like we didn't already know that the earth doesn't love us.
We love it.
Love it like some stupid junior-high-school-kid romance,
Look back and cringe:
After pining, whining, and subterfuge,
The object of desire is in our bed and uh-oh, now what?
Hand jobs and finger-fucking.
And now maybe abuse it.
That would be fun.
When things get spooky, kids, you can always leave.
You get older
And you don't worry so much, believe me.
You know how to make resolutions.
You get so most of your wounds are paper cuts and stiff necks.
Nothing a band-aid or a back rub won't cure.
Or a really enormous amount of money.
Then this.
Something big unstoppable random.
Positive self-image or no
You are not a Problem-Solver on this level.
But your choices are still endless.
You can loot the ComputerLand
Or you can patrol the street with a flashlight.
You can love your life or take it.
I learned to hug people harder.
It isn't much, but it doesn't have to be.
I couldn't explain that to my friends on the east coast
Who called in a panic then carped, as in a single voice:
Yeah, right, Go West Young Shit-For-Brains.
Oh well.
They have hurricanes.
Slow fade and lapse back into band-aids and back rubs.
No need to live out there forever.
The Niners just won the Super Bowl and the damage is
Oh yeah the Embarcadero Freeway is still closed
Mostly an inconvenience.
You take the long way 'round enough you forget there was a shortcut.
And then
A restaurant you always liked, in Chinatown, on Kearney
Henry Chung's Hunan with the dancing chili peppers on the sign
You won't believe the onion cakes!
Closed? You gotta be kidding!--due to structural damage.
A little magic-marker map in the window
To Henry's bigger, colder place on Sansome
Remember?
With the tacky-chic neon wall installation that spells out:
???????????????????????????No MSG??????????????????????????????
I walk there with my sister
And she's depressed.
That little hole in the wall, she's eaten there
Every time she's been to San Francisco.
I want to immerse myself in Tsing Tao and onion cakes
But she makes me tell the stories.
How the light caught the windows as they fell
From the Kaiser Building in Oakland.
How in Hunter's Point--famous for crack and drive-by shootings
(Yo Crips! Yo Bloods!)
--I laughed
When the windows rattled with the first aftershock.
How the yuppies downtown walked around dazed,
Many with drinks in their hands,
And all the men, their ties at half-mast.
Some of the stories aren't even mine
But I tell them anyway
She needs to know
Needs to taste it
And I need these scallions, this sesame batter,
This perfect grease.
David Fox
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