Bernal Litterati [sic]

San Francisco authors read from their work. That means you, too.
San Francisco located stories given preference.
Mic-less open-mic.

Loose-leaf authors
scat
ter
words in
the wind sha
dow
of a library

This week James Lawrence reads his $200 prize-winning short story, Stiltson.

$20 prize for the best Real Estate-centric poem!!

HERE'S A PAST BERNAL LITTERATI WINNER:


I've got an electric bi-i-eek
I've got an electric bi-eek
Sometimes I don't switch it on, but
It's still easy to ride;
I listen closely to the talk I cruise by, and
Most everyone has something,
Somewhere they're going;
Even when I pass by the mortuary,
The nomads in tents face the statutory,
Propane camp tanks feeding Fentanyl to the masses,
And men and women all making passes.
Russian oil splattered roadkill debris;
I hit every red light when I ride this street,
But still I only hear half that I meet:
I'm still too fast for the others;
Listen now, sisters and brothers,
I ride an electric bi-i-eek
I ride an electric bi-eek


AND HERE'S ANOTHER

There are murals around town painted Rubin Rude:
The faces of public places
Such as, for instance, the Bernal Branch library's eastern wall.

It strikes me, though, that in Women's History Month
Women muralists ought to get half the space, don't you think?
Every year we ought to put the vertical places up for auction
So that who does the talkin' isn't just who got there first.

Yeah, let the boys pay the girls not to put up stuff if
The boys want to keep that public viewshed theirs.
I mean, if the girls like the stuff already there,
Don't bid for the space. Let it ride.

But humdinger, if Benioff wants to shout to the world
With that great big outie thing, but some gal with a brush
And a can of paint has something to say,
I say make him have to pay her not to splash her story in the air.
It's our sky, isn't it?
Well isn't it?

LAST WEEK'S $20 WINNER:

700 trees down in San Francisco;
Their roots loose in the rain-bloated earth,
Their boughs yardarms caught in gale after gale
Till the keelson snapped,
Cracking sidewalks into white-capping chop.
And elsewhere, everywhere, all around town it’s a raggedy old place,
Bent and shorn by plague and
A long, wet winter the likes not seen for 44 years—
Me too, long in the tooth, long on remembrance, no longer merely a lad with big ears for the old-timers’ tales,
But myself witness, back then, to the longest pleated turns of sun and drenching winter storm-blown screaming Hell ever known by living soul.
And you? Don’t ask, don’t tell
Lest I pop your skaldic, pompous truth,
Which, like mine,
Never heard from Noah’s lips
The whopper drowned the world.