We walk in May Day sunlight
where Menace barks at a bulldog
chained behind a fence
at the bent junction of Market and 35th.
I pet my twelve-year-old poodle mix.
After he squeezes out a shit ball
under the overpass
of the MacArthur 580,
a woman’s unhoused scream
slaps me back into Menace’s wet shit.
With my hand gloved
in a plastic bag, I pick up
his black offering,
scrape my boot against a curb.
Surrounded by shopping carts
and engineless cars,
I gape at a mural: two Black kids
stand within a big bloom garden
grinning in their sublime skin.
In the background, a painted home
rattles me like a scream —
their Telegraph Avenue mortgage
surely paid off
and their beds
a clean sheet invitation.
Yet I can’t be rooted
in fantasy. We must leave behind
this utopian assault.
Up to 36th and Market,
a driver honks at us
blocking her sharp right turn.
I want to squish her honking
like a stink bug.
Menace growls. He’s a compressed
ball of anger. On cracked concrete,
I hear Oakland speaking.