four fremont st octets

(1/2/17)
#1


fortune cookie fortune caught in a Chinese
evergreen oak windswept outside the market—

green travel trailer jacked up on blocks, signed for
rent amongst closed food trucks—stubbed cigarettes in

a chipped yellow planter, gas line loops around
a low bamboo; crumpled black bag surfacing

from Japanese maple leaves by the handpainted
car, a red-gold dragon blazoning its hood


#2

concrete Budai frozen in laughter between
two pruned camellias & two bowing ferns;

concrete pavilion under mitsumata’s
silver buds; they dangle off red branches like

baubles next to the hooped wooden rain barrel—
multitude of fallen leaves in a circle

of pavers mottled with colonies of moss:
whenever you look the Budai’s unaltered

 
#3


cold frame hoops piled against chain link—too late now;
Tuscan kale & chard in raised beds with frost killed

lettuce; tomato cages in primary
colors, some upright, some tumbled down; dormant

grape vines knotted & snarled along the top rail
by the sidewalk; flattened cardboard boxes rot

on mounded black soil, a slatted compost bin
heaped half full with stalks & unharvested squash


#4


where the street curves, black mondo in disarray,
hellbore budding despite blighted leaves, yucca’s

haphazard gestures; two sandwich boards: yoga
& bakery; steam gushing from the laundry’s

exhaust pipes, & a coffee cup with heat sleeve
between two stones with indecipherable

white letters; past the hermetic ivy hedge,
swing set’s unorthodox tire on rusted chain



Jack Hayes
© 2017