Allison Hedge Coke: California Poets Part 10, Four Poems

Allison Hedge Coke

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Allison Hedge Coke

Four Poems

Song for Flight

The gun was missing.

Sleep

        time

                     despair.

Some boom, pull –

                                 lung spent

lightning rustle,       eventide roll,       

then mourning.

Grown-up hung up killing seed. Killing kid hustle.

Trumpian tangle, 

                             life without clout.       

No doubt, state deed.

deep in the thick of it, we scrawl seeking significant.

ICE-made paste of it.

The gun was missing. Simple occlusion.

Sleep in time despair.

Shush Shush

              Just when everything seems good, all in place, all peace,

something slinks in, some shim-shimmied long-corded 

delivery to earth, rolled ropes down to dirt from deep in wide sky

backfall tumble in some stranger’s dream now near you poof, gone 

too far gone, time’s up, revoked pass, we split quicker than we came

in.

Last night, I held her face while she lifted, filled her mouth with leaves, sung her low,

in the even light, morning, she reappeared briefly, brought me solace, just like that.

Like wind, we quiver rush round and back, always drifting, always shush     shush.

Like us.

In Apartment 62

                 For Kátia, Lisboa 2026

My window faces the blue door, 41,

in a wall of ancient blue and yellow 

pointal design spread out on field white

crisscrossing bold blue backdropped by

second plane of golden radiants, theatrical

walls buffed with iron filigree minor terraces fit

tight to each french door, unbowed for blooms

below, children’s umbrellaed reverie, cobblestone 

sidewalks, loosed emptiness as hard rain populates

a sudden notice between each blue, gold cluster

a green quad sustains, and through the stone, 

concrete, jut leaves, vine-stem growth, behind 

every façade prevailed.

Real

Nineteen years of war nestled

earlier arrivals, bombs began years before

our births, napalm nudging our early childhoods awake, monks' self-immolations

molested our Manson marred mornings – the news was incredible.

Remember?

The Real Thing, Oreos, Coco Puffs, Incense, Peppermints, the Color of Time, Heard

it Through the Grapevine, what the radio signaled we ran for – Presidential Awards,

Kids Incorporated, girls can play – Box Canyon. You’re too young.

We lost our milk teeth knowing there's something happening here saying we weren't

playing that, no, we're not playing.

We were born to it.

It was a Wild World, hard to get by world, losing living creatures sealed in stamps

we traded alongside other sporting game. We were in tune and doomed to it. Rumble

in the jungle, float like a butterfly, Sting –

Donning POW/MIA bracelets in elementary, then junior high, we won wearing skirts

exposing knees we beat severely riding banana seat mustang bikes, watching

gas & bread go from eleven cents to a few dollars

before we were fully seasoned. People killed each other over syphonings & shoplifting

needs. We were hammered.

We were all wounded, some of us killed still. Nuclear fatalism, paranoia ran deep,

early eighties recession crept ideal possession, nothing from nothing leaves nothing,

nothing ain't worth nothing but it's free.

Nothing curtailed our perception in relativity.

Our older relations in school when Kennedy was shot, we maintained on 9/11, as if

it was the same thing. Now they’ve raised enlistment age, to match those

familiar.

And the wheels go round and round, we are here/here we are, again-n-again, we go

into another for nothing good, nothing soothing, nothing we know now – real.

Author Bio:

Allison Hedge Coke, a Fulbright scholar, First Jade Nurtured SiHui Female International Poetry Award recipient, National Book Award Finalist, recent Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals, and U.S. Library of Congress Witter Bynner fellow, has written seven books of poetry, one book of nonfiction, and a play. Following former fieldworker retraining in Santa Paula and Ventura in the mid-1980s, she began teaching, and she is now a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Hedge Coke is the editor of ten anthologies and has served as an editor and guest editor for several magazines and journals, most recently World Literature Today, Zócalo, and About Place Journal.

The social media hashtag #poempromptsforthepandemic hosts hundreds of original prompts she crafted as public outreach during the COVID-19 pandemic. A career community advocate and organizer, she most recently directed UCR’s Writers Week, the Along the Chaparral/Pūowaina project, and the Sandhill Crane Migration Retreat and Festival.