At Pizzeria, Performers Range From Bad to Verse

It is just after 8 on a Wednesday night and, at Little Tokyo Pizza, they’re serving up poetry with the pepperoni.

Anything goes at this weekly meeting of this very-much-alive poets society. At this moment, the muse is Shirley Ward, a poet in wrapped head scarf and high-top sneakers.

She is reading from a legal pad words of reassurance she wrote for a friend whose son is giving her trouble, words about all mothers sharing this experience of abandonment.

Ward puts down her pad, hugs the mike, closes her eyes and sings in a strong, clear voice:

Your mama may have

and your pappy may have

but God bless the child

who’s got his own . . .

The customers wander in and whisper their orders to owner Benny Ko. Anderson Stone is reading his protest poem, a blast at gardeners who use leaf blowers.

Funny, this doesn’t look like a salon des artistes . On one wall, a Miller Genuine Draft sign drips phony icicles. Fried chicken and zucchini sticks sizzle on backlighted signs.

A trio of businessmen pause on their way through Japanese Village Plaza, pressing their noses to the glass. What they see is Barbara Mendes, fuchsia hat atop black sausage curls, strumming her guitar and singing.

They look puzzled.

By now, perhaps 20 people are at the Formica tables. Armando Garcia, a Roosevelt High student, is debuting as a pizza parlor poet. All in black, he has come to talk about anger and his need to express it.

Garcia scrunches his eyes and screeches, “It’s (expletive) hard!” That is his poem. Thank you, he says quietly, and sits down.

Someone observes, “He didn’t need no notes for that . . .”

The slap-slap of pizza dough between palms is audible. Ko takes another order--small, with mushrooms.

Roland Porter Jr. is reading his “Man Iac Mouse,” the despairing ode of a homeless man who’s tired, tired of:

“Waking up under a cardboard box to find someone lifted my empty wallet and stole my stolen sneakers. Leaving behind books by the Burroughs Brothers: Edgar and William--that I rubber band to my feet as Literary Loafers.”

The curious still drift in. The cook comes out to take a bow. Mongo Kalahari Tari-bubu (“Dr. Mongo”), who brought poetry to Little Tokyo Pizza, passes the plate for donations for cleanup. A regular, a Thai cowboy, is singing, “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

Dr. Mongo’s poem is “Penitentiary.” It was inspired, he says, by “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” in which Oscar Wilde wrote:

“I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky.”

Dr. Mongo’s own words are angrier:

My name is penitentiary!

I am made of steel and stones.

Should you land

In my domain

I’ll crack your flesh and bones . . .

Mongo, 53, knows about prison, having served five years in Ohio for murder--”self defense.” His doctorate, he explains, is in philosophy, but his profession is “to start venues” such as this one.

It’s closing time. The regulars link arms and sing, “Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer . . .” It’s a nice touch.

Since January, Chinese-born Ko has been hosting poetry night, at the suggestion of a customer/poet. It hasn’t really boosted business, he says--”Most of these artists don’t have too much money”--but “it’s fun. They don’t give me any trouble.”

For Shirley Ward, it’s more. She lives in a hotel (indeed, she made her white dress from motel towels) and, at 47, she hasn’t had many breaks.

“This is my love,” she says. “My therapy. If it wasn’t for poetry, my only life would be going to the hospital to get chemotherapy.”

Roland Porter, a scriptwriter “always before my time,” survives by “putting chopper motorcycles together.” Poetry is food for his soul. Here, he says, “We don’t care where you come from.”

Adds Dr. Mongo, “We’re not seeking perfection. We’re here enjoying ourselves.”

Diplomas the Hard Way

Edna Uraguchi’s plan to “just quietly finish school” was foiled. A standing ovation greeted her as she walked up to get her diploma at Roosevelt-Bilingual Community Adult School graduation.

You see, she was a high school dropout. About 60-some years ago.

Uraguchi was the second of five daughters of Japanese immigrants. In the 1920s, when her parents sent the oldest girl to Japan to live, Edna had “to help mama” run a small rooming house and care for her siblings.

The years slipped by. The family moved from town to town--Tulare, Fresno, El Centro. Edna never did finish school.

About six years ago Uraguchi--who gives her age as “past 80”--decided the time had come. Having nursed an invalid husband until his death, she wanted to stay physically active and reasoned, “You need exercise on your upstairs, too.”

She adds, “I don’t need the diploma or anything like that.”

Illness almost caused her to give up but “I asked the principal if it was all right just to take one class at a time.” It was.

She didn’t tell her family about graduation. “I don’t like fusses.”

*

For Ana Sanchez, 26, of the Roosevelt adult class of ‘93, it had been a sentimental journey. She’d dropped out of Roosevelt High just months shy of graduation in 1985.

“I was stupid,” she says. “I’d started hanging out with the wrong friends,” coming home late, missing class. She had a job and “thought I didn’t need school.

“Wow, we were going to have fun. Well, it was no fun at all because I ended up on Skid Row,” a single mother living in one room with four children 7 and under.

Once, she started back to school, but became pregnant. Then, in 1989, she re-enrolled. “This time I kept going.”

Things are looking up for the family. Recently, through a federal program for low-income families, they moved into a three-bedroom condominium in Huntington Park.

Sanchez wants to enroll at Cal State Dominguez Hills and become a physician’s assistant. She’d like someday to work at County-USC Hospital: “There’s a lot of women there that I could help.”

High school was only the beginning. “There’s no stopping me,” she says.