Market Street & West Grand Avenue

The sound of true quiet is the last bus home,
that endless harmony, the melancholy of people
tugging on the stiff iron wires, trying to go
home. I didn’t know that Oakland was so beautiful,

red and yellow lights everywhere, haphazard jewels of
endless night, I see the kids I teach running away in the
spotlight dark, (I hope they are okay, I hope they do not

). We have no inferences, no hate. The trees recede when
Berkeley dissipates from view, greenery shrubs, clotheslines rise
from humble apartment buildings. I walked to a friend’s house from
the 88, the seats were colored with stickers and the yellow-green
afterwheeze of spit. It was dark, and the cars echoed that iron music:

(sapphire alarms, that wheezing breath, the ¾ sway of things going
wrong). Quartz lights bedazzled the spectacular west:
I hope that the boys I teach are doing okay.

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Yuna Kang is a queer, half-deaf, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She loves postcards, crows, God(x), and cats. Kang is also the recipient of the 2024 New Feathers Award.