SoMa Literary Review

unlike

By KC Wilder

unlike Minneapolis

or sweltering Chicago,

many San Francisco streets

implode by dark of night

some exotic hand grenade fauna

not found anywhere else

tangled in this jumble of Victorian dollar bills —

detrimental, discus-throwing

peabrained mammals dominate

the areas beneath parked cars.

scruffy, sometimes luminous

putrescent white pirahnas

effervescent fins transformed into

thin filmed sails,

flocks of them in Chinatown

patrol sometimes near Stockton Street,

greaseball rooftops up above

where mounds of lumpy concrete forks

where unconcerned street heathens go,

where unaware flat multitudes

inject — disperse — and flow

positively manifesting —

slamdunk situation,

out in Sea Cliff

framed by colorful gardens

full of life

rabid gray attack monkeys

nightly prowling Anza Street,

ascending stairs with stealthy movements

speckled blue and black,

standing 20 inches long

dangling little parasites

between bubbly fibrous arms

impressive and appealing —

thought brought from Grenada

by soldiers here on holiday,

ding dongs in the 80s

in the meesey micey Ronald Reagan

salad days of yore,

San Franciscos windswept shores

played unwitting host

to many oddball visitations,

the snazziest of zoo creations

dumped from cars on Fulton Street —

to anyone observant

they are visible today

sociologies notorious bugs —

angelic upstarts,

butterflies with disconnected or

distended stomach parts that

flew across Valencia and

landed high on Castro,

all around they nested

in a most ironic fashion,

amongst the fine establishments

trading in their hearts.

other disconnected body organs

soon arrived.

chicken parts cut in pieces,

candied eggs they'd seem to slide

beneath the Noe Valley hills,

eerie cel phones that collide

in secret, puffed up —

grew inside.

cuckoo brown bananas

sliced up rice-a-roni

celebrating San Francisco life —

one cant help but obfuscate

fine wine free associate

bouncing off the Golden Gate

strangeness in the night

The poetry of KC Wilder has appeared in more than one hundred literary journals. “unlike” is from the forthcoming book “Counterpop: The Action Poetry Reader.” KC lives in San Francisco. More of KC’s work can be found at www.kcwilder.com.