Downtown Oakland Poem

Barbara Jane Reyes

We wait for the light here, at 14th and Broadway,

Here, we hand passers-by silk ribboned poems,

We staple them to our neighborhood bulletin board,

We paste them to lampposts. And here, we fold poems

Into parking lots, under each windshield wiper blade,

We tape them up in the Ruby Room bathroom stalls.

Here, we hand letter haiku on Dubs colored confetti,

Weave them with daisies into vacant lot chain fences,

Slip them into glossy envelopes, and drop them

Into the mail slots of whole blocks downtown.

Here, 8th and Webster bullhorns and firecracker fists

Here, spray paint odes for boarded up storefronts,

And here, baybayin in balisong carved verses

For oaks lakeshore. Here, we set paper boat songs

Alongside egrets and geese, to float slow to the bay,

Westward paper airplane and origami crane poems,

Here, boombox blasting Digital Underground,

Here, our hella Baller ballgame singalong