Portside

The neighborhood looks like someone put their kitchen outside /
        Like our children love Detroit / And therefore it is better to cry
        than cry through your hands.

    (I’ve been rehearsing my speeches all summer / tracing car keys on
        paper and calling it poetry)
 
    I’m reaching
    through the chair
    Into the back of a rib cage        (the metaphor is the chair)

    I am a spirit who sketches
            And thinks too much for a man killed by a herd

                    A poor man’s coat becomes my leader
                         But soon will need a decent eulogy

                    Waiting for a bus station to become
            more like a birthday eve than juvenile jail sentence
                            is a matter of contraband.

    “I will buy you a drink tomorrow,”
                    the pain here told the pain there

Tongo Eisen-Martin was born in San Francisco and earned an MA at Columbia University, where he taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. In 2012 he created an anti-racist, anti-imperialist curriculum titled We Charge Genocide Again. He has also taught at San Quentin and Rikers Island. He is the author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes and Blood on the Fog, both from City Lights Books. He was the 8th poet laureate of the City of San Francisco.