There Was Something I Just Thought Of (Sixth)
by Douglas Slayton
When it was late I'd stand under the lights
on the platform, waiting for the rattle
of the tracks, as the dark blue black of night
sinks my cover of yellow light crackle.
I miss the moon hanging over my bed,
when I had no where to be the next day.
I miss nights that were quiet in my head
and the bed wasn't mine but I could stay.
I wasn't scared of the streets I walked
knowing they'd be around in the morning.
I hate every night like the one we talked.
You're in my clothes, more with every washing.
I remember every night, they haunt me,
and how the last train was always empty.
Walk Home
by Chris Alarie
A shot sounds at a sideshow
And does not disrupt a thing
Danger is likely, life is lively
Catch a fade, go dumb, super hyphy
A crowd gathers at a warehouse
Tangle of noise & limbs & beer
Money for the touring bands, please
How strange that somebody lives here
Bobby & Huey
Huey & Officer Frey
Little Bobby Hutton
Huey & Tyrone Robinson
New Year's Eve, I walk home
From MacArthur BART, drunk
In the rain, the long way
Past Casper's Hot Dogs twice
Sick to my stomach of
Myself and everything
I buy some Gatorade
Watch The Simpsons 'til dawn
I live here, I am home
Is the bullet hole in the
Window of 'Lectric Washouse
Still there? I wonder, years later
Home
by Alexis Faulkner
Can take your heart at any time
Fashion it into a pretzel shield
And then squeeze all of the blood all
over the shoes
Of your tribe
Oakland is a mess of palm trees
And basketball courts and friendly
faces
Sometimes turned worried into that
frantic well of loneliness and misdirection
It is the punks that press you back
into shape
It is the hippies that make you know
love
It is the lake that shows you dead
catfish
Even the dying are happy to pass
At home
Ivy Drive
The stories I am missing show me that
this was a young place
But parents shot at everything
Wrote it all down
My first memory, big shake and smashing
the whole kitchen
My mom wrote it in October 1989
Garfield Avenue
The one lemons were three lemons and
everyone stopped by to hustle up the tree while my family wasn’t
looking
I put my black cat in the swing and
Uboo never gave me hell
And Giamocha lent his tail to every
occasion
Plum wine, we said, as fruit rained
down over the roof
Too many rotten on the concrete
Rottweilers, neighbors and our own kept
us all over that hood
Busted hydrants for summer
Winter
Winter was homeless there
Winter has no place in Oakland
My baby sister
My baby bunk beds
My Easter Bunny
My salad of nasturtiums
My friends in Diamond Heights
The school of Redwood Heights
The hills of Grandma lavender and her
chemistry
Ever July planning on planting more
bushes
A new millennium on Vernon Street
Junk
We had a lot of junk but I kept our
books in the best order of the English alphabet And just stuffed the
rest in the closet
There was a black cat there too who was
sweet with luck
But less than the magic one
BART and the 57 kept late nights up
later and long walks up that sunnyslope never felt less than Everest
I haven’t the best habits about
keeping memories
Locked in order
I haven’t the best record of where
Shattuck Avenue
The concrete that touched my house
touched a cherry plum tree and it broke apart
And threw me off my bike
Gave me the feeling that Oakland would
never change
The city would flood and drain with
fresh thousands and the streets
Would always be unpaved
This place was right near Ashby
The house had not only been for me
Psychedelic leave-behinds, sharpie
skinhead cartoons, tchotchkes generations old
Every crusty creeper in Berkeley left
vibes on Shattuck
Shattuck Avenue was a double exposure
of holding hands
And spinning as hard as the wind ever
blows
Overtop small shadows of dark leaves
and flowers
Precious and brilliant and wanting a
harder party and never looking back
In the end, we got robbed and I moved
back to San Francisco
The best July was the roof on Alcatraz
Avenue
First holiday stop: Berkeley Roses
But the view was no good and I’m glad
we went back to base
The television volume broke my patience
a thousand times over
But this time drowned completely by a
campaign of flames
I loved every minute of that dangerous
display
I wish memories were something final
I wish memories were easy to keep filed
in your brain
And they were an exact representation
of a time and place
But mostly they are shifting
All I want to remember
All I can remember
I remember being friends and being in
Love with Oakland
Alexis Faulkner is Executive Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.
Chris Alarie is Senior Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.
Doug Slayton is Professor Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.
Chris Alarie is Senior Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.
Doug Slayton is Professor Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.
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