
Paul Corman-Roberts
Sausalito
Here
liquid runs uphill
4 AM always a festival
of incandescent light enough
to recite poems
from the cold black water
of Richardson Bay
to blackened art galleries
and distant seafood grottos
Here
you can’t throw a hissy
without hitting a musician
a writer
an artist
or one of their installations.
Funny
how the smell of money
draws the perpetual
abstract hustle of the mind.
And it colors in so nicely
and lights up so vivid
and everyone owns a business
or is a contractor
and no one has a job
and everyone knows their place
and it’s all good.
Because your next meal is pre-destined.
the roof over your head pre-ordained
and there won’t be any other jobs
and there won’t be openings in residency
any time soon.
Thanks for coming
to buy us out of our
artisan crafts and
our custom gourmet foods.
Thanks for admiring
our festive decorations.
Now please be on your way;
you can’t spend the night here.
[“Sausalito” originally appeared in issue 6 of Out of Our magazine in 2011.]
Paul Corman-Roberts is co-founder of the Beast Crawl Literary Festival
in Oakland, California. He is a compulsive organizer and writer of
frequently subversive words. His out of print collections of poems and
flash are 19th Street Station from Full of Crow Chapbooks, 2011; Neocom(muter) from Tainted Coffee, 2009; and Coming WorldGone World (The Abomunauts Are Coming to Piss on Your Lawn) from Howling Dog Press, 2006.