Poetry: Selections From Jonathan Hayes

The Bus
 
Waiting on the street bus
she told me,
 
Last week I boarded the bus
and a couple blocks up
an old Chinese lady
came on with a chicken
pecking and heckling
while the bus driver told her,
 
“No animals on the bus”
 
So, she snapped the chicken’s neck
and walked to the back of the bus 
 
 
 
Crippled Boy
 
There is a boy. A boy in the BART station on 24^th Street, in a wheelchair below the ground.
His mother sells roses to the people who go up, up the escalator. The boy is dashing his wheelchair around, like a cat wanting to get out of water. He laughs, looking up at the people.
He watches them as they go up, up and away into the next day. But he is there to stay below,
in his wheelchair, in the pits of depression that smell so bad like the BART station. He wants out, out of the wheelchair, out of the station, out of his life, and out of his skin.
 
I walk over to his mother and buy a rose for my love. He races towards us in his torture chair,
arms spinning, head bouncing, eyes rolling, and mouth foaming, then stops inches before my feet, laughs at me, the rose, and his mother.
 
 
 
On Telegraph Avenue
 
She sits cross-legged, in the sun, with sweet chili lips, 
sandalwood skin and eyes, eyes of the moon.
 
Her long black hair drops down. Kissing her dog,
her lips in fur, she smells the funk, the pure truth of all living things. 
 
She looks up and says,
 
“Spare change?”
 
 
 
 
 
Jonathan Hayes lives in Oakland, California with his wife and their cat.