It was the sunniest weekend, and even in alleyways, in steep afternoon shadow, the light and heat lingered, as Temescal Alley became an annex to the Kerouac Alley gathering of the past six months. Golden Sardine had scootched over to Oakland for a Sunday, and they brought their mic from North Beach. They’re setting up at Tallboy, which serves vegan hot dogs, good drinks, and today, poetry.
A few blocks up in the alley, in the shade, we are pre-gaming by reading out and listening to a favorite Ada Limón poem. I share a drafty collaborative unfinished thing inspired by Anne Waldman and Ted Berrigan’s “Memorial Day” (all words are welcome in the alley), local poetry lover Alexis wrote a haiku to the alley and the last of the sunshine, Amalee (take her writing workshop Ancestors Taught Me: A Poetry-Writing Workshop Series in the Black Radical Tradition) reads us a “whatever” poem that hit so hard, and Connie listens. We wrap by revisiting Claire Schwartz’s “Blue” which then gets us to talking about Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and Derek Jarman’s Blue. On to blue as protection, spiritual and chemical, to cyanotypes and woad, here we go, we’re going to write about all the blues inside and around us, then we’ll print them all in indigo.
Two of us bike and two of us walk down Telegraph to Tallboy, post up at the bar and the booth, and say hi to all the friends, acquaintances, and poetic idols who are there. It’s been a whole 48 hours since we saw each other last. And for me, a double hug and kiss from a beloved prose writer in one arm and fangirled poet in the other, what a burly welcome, an Oakland embrace.
The sun is here in the bar now, sliding in and holding onto eyes and sparking. And here are The Living Poets, Oakland at the West Bay mic!
Micheal Foulk opens with the wondrous horror of lightning bug blood and the father who slaughters each insect, gloving his child with glow. He estranged himself, the father, in his very act of attempted connection. Micheal’s second piece remembers being a young kid, alone, ever suspended between parents on the plane that sails between them, this living tether to someone alien and resented.
Tureeda Mikell is a poet whose work lives off the page, on her tongue and in the air. She brings years working in the medical system to a blistering sarcasm that knows the names of all the meds and also why pills are shoved at you instead of care. She’s concerned that we’re loving computer-generated simulacra instead of each other, and she gives it to us as a declaration: whereas, whereas, whereas.
James Cagney sharpened up an old poem and delivered it fresh and hot, hell it’s too damn hot, twenty years later, even in October. Darius Simpson is a poet from Ohio who is in Oakland now. Glad he made it, and brought books for us to buy. Support local poetry. Golden Sardine likes a revolution in poetry and the tone tonight at the mic is one of high dudgeon, of being fed up with the system, of knowing that not much changes in a couple decades so the old riot is still rumbling. But there’s a shape to it, a rhythm that quiets the whole bar down to listen.
Now the curtains are drawn and we’re going dark and deep. We’re all leaning in for Mimi Tempestt, who brings her Wandaland archives up to Oakland. Mimi’s research into learning and knowing LA poet Wanda Coleman through her published books and archived letters and grievances and the memories others share about her brings into the room the pain of loss, of knowing and loving someone and never getting to hold them except in their words, which have seeped into you, become part of you, are how you know the world now. There is so much grief, so many Black women artists who died full of words, even Mimi’s mother who survived has a daughter who fills the room with double-voiced letters to the Black women who are in her library and her mind. Every word has two mouths, maybe more. We talk after about how hard it is to shift gears to write poems when all you’re reading is prose, but her dissertation will still be full of two poets’ spirits, maybe more.
If you buy a book, you get a tarot reading. I buy a book, but say thanks and skip the cards. There’s a fine popcorn machine sending movie theatre-scented memories everywhere. An extra vegan hot dog lands in our vicinity and it gets assigned to someone hungry to keep them going. One more drink, let’s say it’s nonalcoholic for the record. Back on the bikes, heading home to give baths to my children, to read the rest of the poems in The Living Poets.
Appreciate the visit, North Beach: we’ve got it from here.