Powell Station: San Francisco

for Allen Ginsberg

Gnawing, gnashing at the heels of tourists,
we step off the underground into the golden
light of Westfield mall stand clear of the doors
the doors behind broken minds and scholarly hearts,
a distance unable to pass save the
passage of Time which slips down
cable car tracks along a live wire
gasping and gripping at that electric shock
(she’s disgusting) praying for something after
the zap smoke pumping through our veins
(she’s queer) the smoke of smog and Karl
the Fog, it’s a gas mask it’s a fire/the vineyards
burning/a pandemic/a distance of the mouth/choking
on the oppression of tongues (she’s loveable
to no one) swallowed in gauze chokes
a Nation Under God indivisible by the number
of brow-skinned people he castrates at the border,
I hear one say to the other that the wall
is higher than his ego and what’s dead in the night
is a living breathing flashback, (she’s quiet) of the
things that tear our minds apart (talks too much)
out of turn, out of time, out of step, out of practice
out of obscurity, the fog the fog it’s choking me
The inside of my brain is chafing a raw red
(she’s anxious) trying to breathe
through a plastic bag to comprehend
the dim light reality of a back
room (she’s cracking) of a Castro bar
where I see you, the multicoloured deep pink,
purples, and blues wash you
in sexual light and I long
to order a whisky sour and for you
to lick my thoughts like maraschino cherries
from my mouth (she’s drowning)
but I have a train to catch
that will carry me back
into the fog.

Rhianna Herd is a recent graduate of The University of San Francisco, where she wrote her poetry thesis through the theme of isolation. She is an emerging poet who is always looking to better herself and her poetry through exploration of the world.