Literal

a dirge

                                                 literal
                                                  
                                                 combing through my hair

                                                   for lice

                                                   the discharge of black

                                                   flat worms that is

                                                   iridescent and

                                                   humorless                                     without the

                                                   ability to punctuate or

                                                   incinerate                dumb areas of

                                                   the soul                                        once where we

                                                   went out for donuts

 

Max Wolf Valerio, 1984, San Francisco

black glass and light and a donut

I think this poem was partly inspired by Hunt’s Donuts, which used to be at the corner of 20th and Mission Street in San Francisco. Hunt’s was the site of late night quests for coffee, drugs, long malingering conversations — warp speed night talk — long ago back in the early eighties and later, into the nineties when I no longer lingered — till it closed in August 2004. The victim of gentrification. Though, Mission Street, last I checked, still has a lot of grit. It is a long ways from being entirely gentrified. Its sister street, Valencia, just one block down and parallel, is farther along that path. But that’s another story.

This poem is featured in my collection The Criminal: The Invisibility of Parallel Forces

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