for Stephanie


Right across Turk Street, south side intersection Hyde,
in the tenement where 911 won’t summon up a blue,
a man beats his woman,
the twentieth time or more, their kids bawling.
Over here, in this flat up on the third,
above blazing red neon signs highlighting
the Triple Deuce Club low below, I listen while
wired white hippies move furniture across checkered tiles 
other side my sister’s arched plaster ceiling till way past 3 a.m.
Shuffling with a sofa as if rearranging the heavens in my mind.

Me, I sleep. Or try to. Nothing else I can do.
Each day I slip off and out looking for work, gliding into the
Streets of San Francisco
winding, curving, like turbulence.
Daybreak brings sweet Cambodian street children out
into a Feinstein-era playground,
still filled with hypes, winos, yellow-green from the night before,
still smelling like piss and lizard.

These kids though, they climb atop steel swing-set bars,
fifteen, twenty feet high,
as if they’re walking joint lines in concrete.
Easy balance, Mohawk grace.
Their sisters provoke a paper war in the street,
     closed-off        block party.
     Paper flying by, I
catch a piece, fold it origamically, create
a mock financial pyramid, toss it back,
watch little girls with black shiny ponytails make confetti
for this ongoing ticker-tape parade,
right across Turk Street, intersection Hyde.