Hungry Ghosts Poetry Night 10/4/23
Photography by Matt Gonzalez, Jeff Hunt, and Erin Lim
Here at Storied: SF, we love poetry. Going back nearly all the way to our founding, poetry and poets have been an important part of what we do.
And so, with a two-month art show at Mini Bar, Hungry Ghosts, we knew we wanted to include spoken-word arts. We reached out to some of the heaviest-hitting orators we've had on the show (full list here). And we ended up with a lineup for the ages: Kimi Sugioka (Alameda's poet laureate), Kim Shuck (SF poet laureate emerita), and friend of the show and all around bad-ass woman K.R. Morrison.
A dozen or so of us huddled in the steamy backroom at Mini Bar that night, settling in amid the waning hours of an 80-degree evening, and got treated to poetry mostly related to the theme of rebirth, the underlying motif of Hungry Ghosts.
Here's one of the poems Kimi read on Wednesday:
““day of the dead”
A spinning of webs
and shadows of swings
where child ghosts sing
with rhyme and wing before their
voices are muted by
earth and stone
The auntie preparing sushi
The father winding his grandfather clock
the audacious daughter diving into river, pool or sea
fully clothed and unrepentant
Some thin veil
cloaks the ether
of was and is
blended in a batter
of marigold and pomegranate
for consumption by
the soul pickers and keepers
who know how to speak
the language of the dead
keep their secrets
wait for the unborn
to resume their alchemy
to continue unfinished missions
and well worn wishes
that will be summoned at first breath
And this is one of the poems Kim Shuck read that night:
”San Francisco”
Pick any street corner
Any
Bench any
Stoop
Any fourth star
In this city or over it
Sit quietly
You will hear the water of time
Keys rattling
Heart and innovation
Ramaytush wonderings
War and colonization and patience and the mint that only
grows on the south side of that mountain right there
You will hear the poetry of place
Popcicle sticks scratching on the curb
Clap songs and
Jump rope spells and
Chess moves
Love curses
Every night in some back room QR Hand reads the future
and the past in autopsied phrases
The Babar poems
Bob Kaufman’s guerilla words shouted at the
unsuspecting somewhere in North Beach
The skyline mutters poems that have been and
poems to come
And if you stand in the Café La Boheme’s door too long
You might hear Alfoncito yelling what we will choose
to call a poem
Old Wives Tales still hover faint along Valencia
You can listen to the purring of the various fogs
As they pad over Eureka and Noe peaks
Wolo’s paintings comment quietly on every new show in
Kerouac alley
If your hearing is very good
Ambrose’s dictionary runs on a loop in a certain bar
On a certain bar stool
And the faint laughter from Sam’s jokes will still grind
Brett’s teeth
Prayers for the plague victims
In more languages than you can count
Mumble down Grant and twine with the poems of the
Unbound Feet Three
There are songs of burying and unburying to be found all
over the Richmond
Every corner
Every bench
Every headstone under the sand at Ocean Beach
Mary and Carol Lee and Paula talk story in classrooms at
State, at tables in cafés turned to bars
John’s words rattle justice
Through the rusting bars of Alcatraz and the voices of
those taken in Captain Jack’s War have made them into
their own songs too
More wealth in words
Than in all of the great libraries that have ever been
And finally, here’s “The InSaints,” by K.R. Morrison:
to the InSaint
a saint in their allegiance
to artists rabid ruthless
in revolution
by microphone wild pen loud paint
to the InSaint
insane for her relentless wrestling
with cemetaried living, the civilized
dead who nest in burning churches
starving for scripture that saves
to the InSaint
the bruised, back patched
street protector, policed & caged
their evicted street codes
molested murdered arrested
to the InSaint
armed with courage & reason to rescue
the queen hemmed inside his soul
or the bold butch unleashing
an honest man from her iron breast
to his InSaint
daughter, now a sex worker
her vandalized bedtime
stories trafficked by a vagrant
father, drunk in her underpants
annointed, InSainted – she
dominates, invades men’s narrative
it is her body, not for free
her sex always comes with a price
to the Beaten
InSaint with weathered knuckles, those weathered
by fists, the pummeled InSaint who craves
sour blood in broken noses, who thirsts
for swollen lips throbbing savage words
and feral
unspeakable
secrets
to the Sinner
InSaint, disappointed
in this world’s repetition, who basks
in dirty water baptisms, hungry
for a wilderness god, for afterlives
where mouths are stitched
with pearls stolen by pirates
where eyes are cataracted
by clouds made by ferocious angels
fallen
to every InSaint
waging war in a world captured
by tyrants and savage humans
I hear your fire
from glittering trenches
I wave your flag
and with every battle
I pledge
my allegiance.”
We'll end this recap with a nice little video that Erin Lim (Bitch Talk Podcast) captured of K.R. reading. Support your local poet!
