Allison Hedge Coke
 
 

Street Confetti

 
 

Right across Turk Street, south side intersection Hyde, in the tenement where even 911 calls don’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 222 the triple deuce club low below, I listen while wired white hippies move furniture across checkered tiles  other side this arched plaster ceiling till way past 3 AM. 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, gliding into the Streets of San Francisco looking for work 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-like 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 pony tails make confetti for this ongoing ticker-tape parade.

  (c)Allison Hedge Coke 2003