By Tony Robles
For sale:
The empty shoes of poets
A guitar body shorn of strings
Grandma’s cast iron pan with decades of
Built-on grease
A pot minus soil
For sale:
Our black skin
Our brown bones
The yellow leaves floating
In pools of our eyes
For sale:
Grandma’s tortilla hands
The guts of grandpa’s old transistor radio and his
Old racing forms
The squeaky staircase
The stained glass windows stained with wine
The murphy bed whose springs announce spring
All year round
For sale:
The rolling hills
Of the working shoulders that
Built North Beach
For sale:
An arm
A leg
A wing
A thigh
(all parts that gave their lives
To the city of St. Francis)
For sale:
The sacred playground
Where we grew up, where
The asphalt collected pieces of
Our skin like a living scrap book
Making us one with it
For sale:
The bridge that no longer connects us
The bridge with the faulty bolts
The crooked grinning street that leads
To city hall
For sale:
Our soul that is
A thin film floating
On the bay
Our heart that
Was once black, brown, yellow
Red—now bleached the color
Of nothing
For sale:
Our murals
That move across
Our skin and out of
The city
Giveaway:
Our dignity
Our spirit
Our class
At this
Eviction sale
