Some Writing from Contributors to the Sable & Quill Anthology v.1

a city condo/hiding out from god Kimberly White

 Here, god walks on homeless feet with grimy dredlocks playing congas for quarters while watching from a sidewalk bar where he has just been served another dry California red

 Here, god rides the bus home to Chinatown, holds a strap in the aisle, wears a face still stained with his workday

 Here, god walks the streets in tight-laced skirts, bursts out of a rented bed wearing only his cowboy boots, paints the bay from a pallette strapped to his kiteboard, pitting a wind that whips one way against a current ripping the other way, wears a pure white silk shirt and pink-tongued sneakers when he walks with his Saturday night girl, serves serious gin and tonics to tourists blue with San Francisco summer, drops into a gallery to view a show of works by his most serious rival, recommends the sushi restaurant on the corner even though he’s a vegan, sells music on the street to those who listen but cannot play, sells art to those who cannot paint, sells flowers to highrise prisoners, sells food to those who cannot cook, sells beads to those who trade in islands,

 walks past brick churches without checking the locks, stuffs anarchist fliers in the mailboxes, reads poetry in a red beret with a thriftstore brooch, writes plays with her immigrant husband who says he knew Janis, works a concierge desk but can’t give you accurate directions because she’s not from around here, rides Friday night streets with his vatos in a tailfinned convertible

Here, god graffitis an alley with benedictions in pictures, digs out a crusty trunk filled with his grandmother’s secret life

Here is where god has been tending bar forever and a day and the pepper steak is as good as it ever was

 Here, where god played the 49ers every Sunday, giving the churchgoers time to be by themselves

 where god dropped acid with Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead and was inspired to rekindle Burning Man, where god’s underbelly casts its most colorful glow, where god flies on pigeon wings, pecks at the cracks in the streets while dodging taxi tires and steel-toed boots

 rooting at the edge of himself, where colors and landscapes reinvent it all while god sleeps

 like the city

where god hides.

(After reading Raymond Carver’s poem Gravy) Hal Freeman

 

When the time arrives

and the Reaper leaves his card,

I will remember those times

when fortune shined:

When she said yes

When our boy first smiled,

When the choir sang the

Hallelujah Chorus and

wrapped us in a blanket of sound,

when the moon dipped over

fields of wheat, on those soft

nights in the back yard,

when the morning came and

the sun, as bright as a blade,

slipped through the blinds,

painting the covers with

yellows and reds.

When I heard the sibilant whisper

of my sister’s  breath as she lay

sleeping on the canvas cot at the

foot of my brother’s bed.

When the smell of bacon wafted

through the hall way and the 

sound of grease pop, popped

in the pan,

when Spike’s cold nose dug

under the covers searching

for a hand to pet.

When mother laid her hand

on my shoulder and murmured

in my ear.

It wasn’t what she said

but that she was there,

and Pop was there,

and the moon returned

every night.