Like a handmade model to scale;
even lines, finely painted details.
There’s a spot on the Bay Bridge
where the picturesque city looks
not quite real: a postcard or
seagull’s low-flying periphery.
Any moment, a guy dressed like
a giant monster might show up.
Skyscraper-sized, white techie—
stomping through neighborhoods,
breathing fire, displacing the locals,
consuming land; this is his city now.
Only, in this case, the hero has to
commute from Hayward or Vallejo.
Odds are they’ll get stuck on the bridge,
sitting in traffic, watching the city burn.
Transition shot—cranes lift support beams,
million dollar high rises built on the ash.
Brennan DeFrisco is a poet, spoken word artist & educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been a National Poetry Slam finalist, a runner-up for the Drake University Emerging Writer Award, and Grand Slam Champion of the Oakland Poetry Slam. He’s the author of A Heart With No Scars (Nomadic Press) and has served as Poetry Editor on the masthead of Lunch Ticket. He facilitates writing and performance workshops as a teaching artist through California Poets In The Schools, Bay Area Creative, Writopia Labs, and Poetry Out Loud. His work has been published in Words Dance, jmww journal, Button Poetry, Gemini, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles.
