Sarah Menefee: California Poets Part 9, Four Poems

Sarah Menefee

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Sarah Menefee

Four Poems

green

my friend writes to me

from 'way back there'

about the pretty scent

of green walnuts

I tell her she will have

to write that poem

tho I think of it

when he walks in

so young and slim

   nebula

I had more to write

but a street man came

into the cafe

with a shirt that said

in large pink letters

NEBULOUS

so that is it

for today

   far back

at the end of the long

underground corridor

the sweet notes of

the blind girl's voice

I recognize this far back

all the pink has

left her cheeks

to land in the letters

'anything helps'

if

if you lay yourself out

across the pavement to sleep

aren't you at rest in God's dry eye

while hardened hearts go by?

(oh gawd there's an ocean

of tears nearby)

'his blood his blood'

follows me downstairs

into the station's corridor

when

the guy with the

genocide tattoo

says we're coming

after you

*

bring it on

you demons 

say the people

'what have I become?!'

cries staggering

Adam Kadmon

Author Bio:

Sarah Menefee is a San Francisco poet and homeless rights activist originally from Reno, Nevada. She is a founding member of such homeless-led groups as Homes Not Jails and 'First they came for the homeless' and a contributing editor with the People's Tribune. 

Her most recent books of poetry include Human Star, CEMENT, and Holy Eel, and the chapbooks In Your Fish Helmet, There You Are, Winter Rose and Sighn; as well as multiple self-published titles under her own imprint, Fishy Afoot.

She has worked in hospitals, casinos, bars, day care centers, offices, and bookstores, and as an artist’s model; and has taught poetry in homeless shelters, half-way houses and at Occupy. Now retired, she is a fulltime gadfly and sitter in cafés.