@ Sisters today

woman w/ curly hair & glasses behind me

(a regular, part of the fam)

talks to guy sitting across from her—

because @ sisters everyone sits with everyone:

children bounce happily on a stranger’s knee,

frail old crones sit in the laps of lean young street wolves—

& you make conversation with any crazy meteorite that crashes

into your table’s solar system, unless you’re mildly autistic

or whatever, in which case you eat silently,

sipping hot cocoa that’s one-third black coffee

& dipping into the filigree & shadow of french literature

((o people, do you know the joys it can bring?))

or make nervous laughing but ultimately suprisingly viable

conversation with a stranger,

but if the two of you are guys, or overly nutty,

it will likely take a fetid turn,

& soon you will be speaking of the choice

between fried worms or grasshoppers for breakfast)

She was telling him about this other girl she knows

who has been suffering harassment from goblins

there are people who are goblins

bullyrags who bedevil their selected targets
(usually the most vulnerable, the least lovely, the least privileged)
with mean goblin games to drive them crazy

“So you’re not you’re not crazy, see?”

she said, meaning to console them

“But the things is… I am, actually,”

he answered, with a rowdy laugh

I tore open a pack of “coffee creamer”

then a second

dumped them into my coffee

picked up the creamer packet afterwards & read the lengthy list of contents

then saw at the bottom,

DISTRIBUTED BY NESTLé USA, INC.

GLENDALE, CA 91203

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?

Call 1-800-288-8682

“Hey,” I thought,

“That’s the company that tried to muscle in & steal the water source

at Cascade Locks, & then after they were quickly voted down by the public,

they moved upriver to try the same scam at the next town”

Then I was salvaging a pair of pissed-in brown pants down the block

& Shannon saw me, came out & talked

“Sorry I sound terrible I’ve got a throat cough thing” she said

“Yes,” I replied with a jolly cornbread laugh,

“The next time I introduce you to someone I’ll say,

‘This is Shannon… she sounds terrible,

but she’s actually a wonderful person.’ ”

HAR HAR har har har

you funny mista

then a firetruck came

& I thought of Trump & how

“even the wise cannot foresee all ends”

& “a traitor may betray himself & do good that he does not intend”

(tolkien quotes)

& offered an oblique analogy to someone who looked desolate on the street corner,

saying “a friend of mine was supposed to go to that party at the GhostShip warehouse

in Oakland the night of the fire,

but she had a setback in court,

which drove her to stay home with a bottle of cheap tequila instead,

so by the supposedly blind hand of providence as it were,
she missed the chance to possibly die,

in a terrible art warehouse fire.”

I’m not sure what I meant by this

but I hope it helped

On my way outta the next place,

A guy finishes saying something about god & people with godly delusions

with an amazing line that brings down the snow-threatening sky:

“It wasn’t a MIRACLE,

pal,

that was a DREAM!”

+11+