It's just poetry, it won't bite

Sidestreet


07.08.13 Posted in words to linger on by


Justus Honda is a writer from San Francisco CA.

Sidestreet
By Justus Honda

in a dusk-colored side street, laughing wavering faces paint a
portrait of a crowd. people in fogbespeckled hats and long
weathered coats carve open cardboard boxes; books spill
onto the damp sidewalk and are stacked in disorderly
teetering piles.
an intoxicated man drums arrhythmically on a red aluminum
table, singing in a flowing tongue; he slurs tales of silver
and broken oaths to anyone listening. his clawing, tapping
drumming fingers scratch lines in red paint–
and in the aftersunset air on the concrete sidewalk it’s only
fifty cents for any of this wide selection of pages and reams
and piles of longforgotten literature and dusty wormeaten
semivibrant imagery; coins are exchanged for stacks of
print in faded leather binding and cars hiss by with trails of
vapor and the man is drumming and singing, tapping and
clawing on the redmetal table; lamenting in a language of
vowels–
and the sky is gray is blue is black and lines of people
shuffle by, streams of people grayfaced in dusk, and stories
are sung are read are whispered and yelled to the
approaching night; stories flow from every hidden
sidestreet crevasse.




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