Mission
Hungry on Valencia in the Mission,
two guys outside the Chicken Shack.
I lean against the bus stop & stare.
Five blocks from the Embarcadero seawall,
where the rich & homeless make their markets.
There’s no way to get a handle on anything &
maybe that’s the ultimate beauty:
one guy in black sweats & Kangol, pulling
chicken parts from the red/white box,
another in a Giants hat, looks up with
brown eyes, straight at me.
Walking through days with light as companion
& rough talk—the syllables move into night,
no sweetness to stay—
I don’t move.
He keeps looking, lifts a piece of
chicken towards me, rings flashing
on his big hands—You want some?
Yeah, I say, moving towards him in
my week-old jeans, hands in pockets.
I rise up like a watching visitor—who
is really among us?
That understated, unreal sweet loving
that drapes itself over a body—
There you go, he says, then,
Take the box, he says,
his hands open to me, his hands
so open.
Chalk Outline
Blood on the floor,
a head, a door.
There was blood on the floor
of the unknown place,
the bathroom floor, the door
slightly open, my blood.
A head, a door.
My mother giving herself.
Giving herself an abortion,
and me, only a pea.
Inside, just membranes
of me. It was nothing,
a revenant, a phrase, no—
a river keeps coming
and coming
in me.
Jan Beatty’s eighth book, Dragstripping, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, September, 2024. Her work was recently featured in POETRY, and her poem, Stripshot, was named one of the best poems read in 2024 by 50 Contemporary Poets on LitHub. Beatty’s memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award. Recent books include The Body Wars and a chapbook, Skydog (Lefty Blondie Press, 2022). In the New York Times, Naomi Shihab Nye said: Jan Beatty’s new poems in “The Body Wars” shimmer with luminous connection, travel a big life and grand map of encounters. Other work includes Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019. Beatty's work has been published in the Atlantic, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, POETRY, BuzzFeed, North American Review, and Best American Poetry. Awards include the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, Discovery/The Nation Prize finalist, Pablo Neruda Prize, Artists Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation, and a Creative Achievement Award in Literature, Heinz Foundation. Beatty worked as a waitress, abortion counselor, and in maximum security prisons. She is Professor Emerita at Carlow University, where she directed creative writing, the Madwomen in the Attic workshops, and the MFA program.
