POET SPOTLIGHT from Jeff Kaliss
The past few annual Poetry Under the Dome sessions, including the latest on April 2th, have happened out from under the titular structure topping San Francisco City Hall and onto the plaza across Polk Street.
The setting of the readings is often a bit chilly and windy, but warming up the gathering are the vim and visage of Antoinette Vella Payne, who has a lot to do with its organization.
Antoinette is of course a poet herself, as well as the president of her own brokerage firm, and is affiliated with the Community Miracles Center. By a chance drawing of names from a green top hat, I was first to read this time, and I was followed by Antoinette’s evocative poem “Cruising Around the Bay” aligning her life story along a series of ‘classic’ American vehicles. I later begged her to allow us to park the piece on the virtual pages of Mill Valley Lit, so here it is. Take it for a test drive, and feel the fun.
Cruising Around the Bay
by Antoinette Vella Payne
Cruising Around the Bay
Started out in a 1953 red Chevy Bel Air
with red vinyl seats.
brought from my brother’s friend
for five hundred dollars in 1969.
It probably died so
my dad helped me buy
1965 teal blue-black canvas convertible top
Ford Mustang a collectors classic now.
My cousin drank my dad’s scotch one day
Drove my car into a light pole
She was underage so I took the blame
Grateful my parents cared only that I was ok.
Dad traded that classy pony car at
Rico Garlardi’s used car lot
For a 1973 mustard yellow Ford Pinto
Rico knew what he was doing.
Dad said it looks like a jewel
in the parking lot on a misty night
after seeing Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte
at the movies.
That yellow Pinto took me through my
pot hazed LSD bell bottomed twenties
on my own wild & carefree I worked at AT&T
cried when the Viet Nam War ended.
Maroon Camaro with removable roof was next
dark tinted tee-top, oversized gangster tires
hippie dippy me selling radio time in the city
cruising to Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay on the radio.
Had a baby girl in ‘81 still driving that open-air Camaro
until I bought a new beige Renault with fancy
gold rim wire wheels to drop her off at day care
it was a lemon.
All down hill from there to a Mazda stick shift
Had to learn to drive it off the lot,
Worked at KRML in Carmel where they filmed
Play Misty For Me & I met Clint Eastwood.
Early nineties, I got a 1981 brown Mercedes with
classic front grill to help me sell real estate
then replaced it with a newer ‘87 blue Mercedes,
plastic interior dash looked like a glorified Honda.
White 2001 Acura propelled me through
the housing bubble & forced foreclosures
cruising that decade along California’s coast
listening to Santana’s Smooth.
Now I ride in a 2014 Honda Civic
Depreciating like the rest
I love the rear-view camera on the dash
Looking backward thru time.
Right foot pedal to metal provides freedom
Especially for women on our own, but
Greenhouse emissions from carbon dioxide
Demands that we find another way home.
