Genius Loci

(Oakland)

Make it

the place

it was then,

so full it split

vision to live

there in winter

so late & wet

abundance

toppled toward

awful—birds

of paradise

a profusion

the ripe colors

of anodized

metal; in gutters

umbrellas

smashed

like pigeons,

bent ribs bright

among black

slack fluttering;

camellias’

pink imagoes

dropping

into water

& rotting,

sweet stink—

& did not

stop :

the inundated

eye, over-

populous

urban eye,

the whole

place, to look

at it, was

a footprint

in January :

everywhere

cloudy water

rising to fill in

the outlines,

& meanwhile

indoors differed

by degree

alone : without

love, loosed

from God,

there were

lovers & touch

rushing in

to redraw

your boundaries

constantly

because

it was a tune

you kept

getting wrong,

the refrain

of what it meant

to live alone,

months of that

and then

sudden summer, sheer release, streets all cigarettes & sashay,

balls-out tube tops, low-riders & belly fat, the girls on the block

all like Oh no she didn’t, and girl, she did, she was mad skills

with press-ons & a cell phone telling him where to stick it, a kid

on her hip, just like that, summer, sheer beauty & lip gloss

that smelled like peaches, & you going to the store for whiskey

& condoms like everyone else on a hot, long afternoon

so long & hot it would just be sunburn to walk anywhere if it weren’t also

a pleasure, thoughtless & shiftless & horny & drunk,

just someone thinking summer wasn’t up to anything deep, & lo

there he was, his punk ass pink as a Viking in a tight

wifebeater & lingering by the public pool, drinking beer so sly

it didn’t look illegal, & he wasn’t a good idea but

did you have a light? & it seemed the whole summer went like that,

taking fire out of your pocket & giving it away, a ditty

you could whistle it was so cliché, like the numbers they gave you after

& you never called, the number of swollen nodes of the kissing

colds you got & later the number to call to get tested, the number of the bus

to the clinic, the number they gave you when they asked

you to wait, the number of questions asked, number of partners, number

of risks, number of previous tests, the number of pricks

—one—to draw the blood, the number of minutes you waited before

results, & then you decided you had to get the tune right,

the how to live it so it doesn’t kill you, to take a number & wait in the long line

of the city’s bankrupt humanism like the bus that never comes

no matter how long you wait, & the grocery bag breaking, & if you were going

to sing that one, the one that sounds like all I got is bruised

tomatoes, broken glass & dirty bread & no one waiting at home, would you

start with genius,

as in, the spirit

of a place?,

& small, as in

of the back, wet

in heat

& the urge

to touch him

there, skin

just visible

between his jeans

& t-shirt,

to see if

he’s sweating,

to see

if he feels

what you feel?,

& if he does,

is that all

the spirit the place

will give,

a small thing

shared, just

a phrase, not

a whole song,

but something

to build on?,

& if it isn’t bread

& if it sure

ain’t tomatoes

it isn’t empty,

is it, like the signage

you walk by

that fronts

the Lakeside

Church of Practical

Christianity,

hawking

a knowledge of God

so modest

it seems trivial?,

& it isn’t ever,

is it, the how

to live it

so it doesn’t

kill you,

the where

to touch it,

the when

will genius

sing your name

so it sounds

like a place

you can live?

Copyright Credit: Brian Teare, "Genius Loci" from Sight Map. Copyright © 2009 by Brian Teare. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press. Permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

Source: Sight Map (University of California Press, 2009)

Summer Poems