©2023 michael raven

guerrilla poetry at
broadway safeway
thursday nights
fliers you
cannot refuse
handed out to
everyone everyone
while a raven
preaches to
the flock

shopping for
something tasty
on the side

Note: In 1995, I was living in Seattle and somehow got put in charge of a spoken word night at a downtown café. One of our tactics for getting people to come was to do theatrical, “guerilla” poetry at local stores where we thought we might have a future audience. In and out in less than a minute (or we’d be thrown out by the management, or police), handing out 8th-of-a-cardstock-page cards listing times and dates of the next “salon” while one or more of us shouted out poetry. Safeway on Broadway (it might have been a different store name, time does funny things to the memory) was one of those locations least likely to call the cops on us, so they bore the brunt of our antics. I did some window shopping, but I never tried to pick anyone up at those events. This picture reminded me of a more fantastic imaginings of possible outcomes that never came to be.