Bart Wilcox
Emeryville, December
2024, Acrylic and corrugated paper, 16″ x 20″

They’ve mangled every cubic inch out
of Berkeley and Old Oakland and now
have turned on Emeryville. Velveeta boxes.
Emeryville is an egg carton.
A boondocks.
A swollen appendix.
An off-ramp.
Rained on, it’s an alley,
an underpass.
A sluice for the city.
The welding shops and
warehouses hide the oil stains
for $50 a foot,
skinned cardboard-thin so we’re
all living on the street.
But
that’s not all I love about it.
It’s the pocket park with just
enough ground to squeeze a
basketball court and a softball
diamond behind the cyclone fence.
A few faded Victorians watching over,
about to drop their gingerbread into the
slop. The neighbors parking a pickup
filled with bushel baskets of fruit
and veg on the court, setting up card tables,
rigging an awning, huddling, joking,
pricing the spare inventory,
holding out.