There was a Mexican grocery store called Mi Rancho<\/p>\n
Near the city jail<\/p>\n
Buttressed by bail bondsmen and cut-rate law offices<\/p>\n
A sweet spot for viciousness<\/p>\n
This was downtown Oakland, CA in the seventies<\/p>\n
Rough and raw and flush with low expectations<\/p>\n
No gentrification to be found here<\/p>\n
But to us kids, oblivious to the dangers of the streets<\/p>\n
Mi Rancho was our wonderland<\/p>\n
We could smell the chorizo as soon as we entered<\/p>\n
Peppers and sausage and lard mixed together<\/p>\n
Then perfectly encased in its delicate skin<\/p>\n
That my mother would oh so carefully remove<\/p>\n
With one flick of a sharp knife<\/p>\n
How she didn\u2019t cut herself I will never know<\/p>\n
Then she would fry it, and the whiff of the spices<\/p>\n
And the sparks of fat crashing against the pan<\/p>\n
Lulled us into perfect bliss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was a Mexican grocery store called Mi Rancho Near the city jail Buttressed by bail bondsmen and cut-rate law offices A sweet spot for viciousness This was downtown Oakland, CA in the seventies Rough and raw and flush with low expectations No gentrification to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":959,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/959"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34474,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34453\/revisions\/34474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}