A Small Poem for San Antonio

I've been reading all these posts from attendees of the San Antonio worldcon and thinking, "Boy, people sure do love worldcons when I'm not there."

But I was at the last San Antonio worldcon in 1997. That's the only way I remember the year Princess Di died -- I'd heard the news just as I was heading over to the Hugos.

It was also the place where I read "The Measure of All Things" to an audience of one in an enormous room. And he insisted on sitting near the back. But he liked it, and requested a copy, which I was only too glad to send.

Oh yeah, and I remember attending an afternoon reception with these folks from something called Alexandria Digital Literature. You see, e-lit was going to be the next big thing. They were only about a dozen years ahead of their time.

I had a great time there. Got to meet Michael Moorcock on the hotel elevator. Heard some great jazz at The Landings. Was on a panel about Ace Specials. Another panel on the near-thirtieth anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also got to hear Betty Anne Hull interview GoH Algis Budrys -- and to hear Budrys sing a Lithuanian folk song. No one mentioned it in the eulogies, but that man had a beautiful voice.

Got a poem out of the experience, too.

This originally appeared in Tales of the Unanticipated number 23, which came out in May of 2002. Eric M. Heideman's the editor, but the poetry editor at the time, if I recall,  was the incomparable Rebecca Marjesdatter.

SMALL POEM

 

I have locked a poem away

to keep it small.

There it is, on a little yellow pad

in a white envelope

in a book bag, away from the light.

I haven’t opened them since I left

San Antonio, a city with far, far

too much light.

In such a city, a poem might grow

to the size of a granny, a big

granny – sumo-sized; a gleeful

smiling face of pasted wrinkles hovering above

these jeep-sized water balloons of arms, thighs, belly –

What a jungle of poetry that city

would be if it were not as prosaic

as all get-out, which is what the poets

do – get out.

Get out and get out. If poets

can breathe the San Antonio air

it is only after midnight, or later

when the Riverwalk restaurateurs

begin to disperse, and the periwinkle

clickety-clack malls are bright

and empty,

and the Menger shuts its back doors

and the Alamo chapel bathes in golden

strobes and wears a silver moonlight

rim like a white feather of panache.

The bar of the Crockett Hotel is as crammed

as a rush-hour bus with ghosts

and the bank behind the Texas Theater’s façade

dissolves, and you can walk through the doors,

pay your fifty cent ticket and drag

a bag of popcorn into the grand

auditorium and watch the rusty, rosy

Ben Johnson faces as big as sea serpents

weather away in the Texas air on that big screen

as they hoot and holler on horseback

(and their daughters shop at Dillard’s for

bookish little jumpers and black berets).

There is a breeze alive along the

Riverwalk, now empty, potentially

dangerous, potentially clairvoyant

potentially transitive, and off you go

like a brushfire as the antique

light poles and contemporary aluminum

signs bang and slap

like drummers in a rhythmless purgatory.

At street level, jeeps and trucks

blow down the street, unfixed and ownerless

and orphaned, rolling on their sides like laughing ushers.

The light is like sand blown southward,

collecting in corners under the mammoth mosaics

and makeshift murals.

From the observation decks, the last

gray-eyed tourists look down on the invisible city

and remark upon the fleeing light,

the absence of which makes every

orange and red neon bar sign

blaze like molten ingots,

and leaves on the tongue of every

San Antonian the residue

of poetry, dry and tart,

vacated, expatriate, available,

until the sun rises

and I put this poem back

into the yellow pad, snap it shut,

seal the white envelope

and stuff it into the book bag.

See? I’ve left it out too long.

It was meant to be

a small poem.