I remember arriving, not the prettiest but appealing
to certain bards in the back room, entering through
the Castro Valley corner door, walking the postage stamp sized
Cinzano bar curated by a man from Detroit who named
his establishment after a certain French elephant in a children’s book
I arrive with budding consciousness around politically correct
solidarity for disheveled neighbors, entering the cigarette
lit night rising to tin siding ceiling
to floor thumping insistence Bruce and Joie and David
and Laura and John, their ash and sweat accumulating
as I waited patiently for my place on the crumpled sign-up sheet
Today, three decades later, I sit in a Santa Fe gallery named simply
Here, and a poet reads to us of roadrunners and a bear and
a continuation of the call for preservation of our environment
There is an otherworldly hum outside the window of leaded glass
The owner sidles up behind me and pushes the frame down
to contain what we came to hear
I have applied lipstick tricking myself into recall of
once shy brunette mane now silver shake and I sense
that former striving for the exotic
not the prettiest but content to enter
A stranger telling me I have the most attractive eyes
as if he was surprised and I remember
the men with whom I slept on North Beach floors
in the crook of a bay window The women who planned
to kiss me on the front porch
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