Eviction- Video Poem about San Francisco Gentrification
Channel: Karl Goldman
Date: 2014-06-28

Eviction: One More Beautiful Day

one more beautiful day
in the City of San Francisco
with its bridges and the bay
famous cuisine and picturesque
Chinatown, sprawling park
with green lawns...

a new layer of fog
mantled over Twin Peaks
to the trolley tracks on Market
five gulls tackled by a steady breeze
 
perfect hour for an eviction
a clear, stern decision handed down
on a quiet avenue where the Google Bus purrs cat-like, contented
picking up young crusaders
with matching back packs, newly armed
 
the gulls hardly notice as the buses
pull out for a green campus to the south
 
eviction --
an elder? a family?
single mother? houseful of orderlies? the
clerk who hands out change at the local market?

four gulls circling the intersection
and then a sky of crows,
avian order quite sublime
under a veneer of cumulus,
the city still has skunks and badgers,
feral cats, coyote
 
thousands and thousands
replaced by monolithic technology

ah, there's no turning back -- architects
feast on air rights
 
oh San Francisco,
once the city of poets
 
Presidio swept clean -- museums expanded --
old hotels purified of the poor, shadows vaulted
into unknown precincts beyond the gate
picture pristine and proper neighborhoods
enjoy sterile rows of research and development --
learn to live forever and never face decrepitude --
 
a new breed of chefs
concoct salmon salad on an arugula bedding,
Zinfandel secreted in a rib eye steak --
wine bars where the decision-makers
nod as the wine is poured, sloshed in a glass,
yes excellent
 
attend the symphony gala
as the vulnerable sink, as many go hungry
in a grid of wealth, in a town of banks
and commerce
 
dispossession is a misery the rich do not need to see,
they may root for the Giants -- take pride in the signs
of progress -- hit the ball out of the park
and hearts swell past a vacated room that once gave shelter
 
those of you who must go
leave in silence, please make the premises
clean as you walk out of the front door, don't steal
anything that is not yours,
 
lost, dizzied by unfeeling hands
you may walk for a moment
in the glorious neighborhoods
soon to be renamed, the Mission now the Quad,
all the cafes shaped like laptops
for the divine children of privilege
you may stay for  a moment
but then you must leave, vanish
 
gulls come out of the fog
with bracelets of air on their claws
and the crows have re-grouped
a civil city no more
 
Neeli Cherkovski
April 2014

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