FIRST PERSON | MARK J. MITCHELL

I arrived in the neighborhood in September 1978, following the woman I’m still lucky enough to love. I had dreams of being a San Francisco poet. 

We moved into the Preston Apartments above what is now Santino’s Vino, but was Uncle Vito’s in those days. I was fresh out of UC Santa Cruz with not-quite-a-degree in aesthetic studies and creative writing, with an emphasis on poetry. So I needed a job. I’d been unemployed a week and the rent was due. I decided to head downtown to apply at a new Walden Books that was about to open. But on the way I stopped in at Bi Rite Liquors, on the other corner of Fillmore and California, and asked if they needed any help. I was working there by the end of the day. 

For the next 30-plus years, I worked in the liquor business, consulting on wine, beer and whiskey, first at Bi Rite, and after it folded at D&M Wines and Spirits a block farther up. 

The neighborhood was a different place then. There were fewer boutiques and more places where the folks who lived around us shopped. It might have been a little rougher around the edges. Certainly it was more colorful. People would come in and chat around the candy rack at Bi Rite or around the bubbly at D&M. We could exchange news about the neighborhood and talk about the criminally high rents.

I was privileged to become a member of the neighborhood, working where I lived, at street level. I got to know people, including the Fillmore’s other poet, the lively and talented Ronald Hobbs, who co-owned Spectrum Imports, aka the bird store. Ronald is more of a free verse, Beat sort of poet than I am. I lean toward the formal. If you stumble upon a copy of his Songs for Fillmore Street, grab it.

All these years I have remained a poet. It’s a life sentence. The first poem I recall writing here was called “Liquor Clerk’s Carol” and I wrote it in December 1978 about the retail scene. I showed it to my co-workers, whose only comment was: “You were high when you wrote that, right?” (I wasn’t.) That’s what it’s like to be poet. People tend not to understand what you do — or worse, think it’s a hobby.

Shortly after I arrived on Fillmore Street, a poem I wrote was published in George Hitchcock’s seminal magazine Kayak. George had been my teacher at UCSC. His magazine made a profit because he had his own printing press and enlisted friends and students to get the issues out. I went down to Santa Cruz to help for one last time. I somehow got the job of putting stamps on the copies that were heading out of the country. I’ll never forget putting the stamp on the envelope addressed to Octavio Paz. I thought at the time that I would never have a prouder moment.

The New Fillmore was founded in 1986 by David Ish, who was a poet as well. He published poetry in the paper, including a lot of my work. Folks would stop me to comment on what they’d read. One of the greatest hits was called “Fillmore Sutra,” about a neighborhood character named Gloria, who frequently asked for a quarter near the donut shop at Fillmore and California. Some locals still mention that poem to me. 

All these years, I’ve kept at it — writing, and publishing a little bit here and there. As the computer and internet age came, I was able to get more work out. But it wasn’t until after the Great Recession in 2008 ended my Fillmore career that my first chapbook was published. This made me very sad, because I didn’t have the home base in the neighborhood to share that accomplishment. My new co-workers didn’t know how long I’d worked for that.

Since then, a few of my novels have been published, plus a few more chapbooks and a full-length collection of poetry. I’m very proud of my new book just out this month, Starting From Tu Fu, which is made up of various formal poems.

In the 40-plus years I’ve lived here, our Fillmore has changed, just as the city has changed. Some of us have stayed around and can talk about the old days. We fondly remember Leon’s Barbecue, Fillmore Hardware, the Donut Hole and pre-Starbucks coffee.

Back when David Ish ran the New Fillmore, he would throw a party as each issue came out. He called them his “fooled ’em again” parties. I think I went to all of them. 

At one, I was hanging out on the back porch with the smokers, chatting with Linda Lewis, the wife of Fillmore resident and saxophone maestro Sonny Lewis. We were talking about poems, and she mentioned a poem of mine that David had printed about a year before. It was a love poem about the joys of domesticity. She told me she had taped it over her sink. Right then, I had a new proudest moment as a poet.

The publication of Starting From Tu Fu is another.

Neighborhood poet Mark Mitchell’s new book of poems is available here.

FILLMORE SUTRA

Buddha is black and laughing.
From my fire escape
I overhear her fire sermon.
This wanting nothing,
it says,
wants practice.

Buddha is black and crying
for bass mantras
that boom from cars,
for children bound
in vests and ties,
for a poet on a fire escape.

Buddha is black and laughing:
On the street
she chooses to see me
and asks for change.

— Mark J. Mitchell