FIRST THING THEY fed us in Michigan was fried chicken. Mary Ann Samyn, poet, said that this was a good omen. In my book, too, fried chicken is always a good omen, but I wanted her poetic perspective on the matter, so I asked, "Why?"

"First night fried chicken," she said, loading up her plate and passing the platter to me, "means we'll get fried chicken again, probably, before the week is through."

Mary Ann Samyn, poet, profound thinker, and veteran faculty member at the Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers, became that moment one of my favorite living American poets – and I hadn't even ever read a single one of her poems. More important, she turned out to be an astute theoretician, for we did have fried chicken again before the week was through. And it was good fried chicken. In fact, almost everything that came out of the MacMullen Center kitchen, Higgins Lake, Mich., where I Spent My Summer Vacation ... Working, was good. And fried. And chicken, or shrimp, or burgers, or sausages.

Except on the last night – and I promised my new friend Gerry LaFemina, poet, novelist, bossman, husband of Mary Ann Samyn (poet), and undisputed foos-pong champion of the world, that I would not let him live this down, so here goes: on the last night of the Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers, 2002, the mess masters offered to feed us all prime rib, and do you know what Gerry LaFemina, director, said?

He said, "Nah." He said, "The kids won't eat it."

Here's the sad part: He was right. I started asking around, hoping to stir up a little mutiny, and all I got was icky looks. "Prime rib? Isn't that like, all bloody?"

And it was too late to do anything about it by then. It was all over. I'd just spent a week teaching my class of seven would-be fiction writers all the wrong stuff, talking about character development and how to spell cicadas, when I should have been focusing on "the basics": an appreciation for thick slabs of rare red meat.

So guess what we get instead of prime rib. That's right: nachos. Nachos! Do I need to describe the nature of the beef, the shredded iceberg lettuce, the gooey ladles of processed cheese food product run-off? Suffice it to say that I got heartburn so bad I still have heartburn. Twelve days later and counting. >

Advice nurse says I have to give it another week before we can even start thinking about the possibility of a broken heart. One week, she says, without coffee, caffeine, alcohol, spicy foods, fatty or fried foods ... And if one week without all that doesn't break my heart, then nothing will, I guess.

Which is why, in some nutshells, I was driving around San Francisco yesterday looking for mashed potatoes and turkey. Not finding it, I might add. But no panic. I had with me, lo and behold, my sister Lo and her husband, Behold. Her first time in San Francisco, his second. So I wanted to get them oriented right off the bat: "There's Can-Cun, which has gone downhill. That's where Royal Kitchen, my old favorite Chinese restaurant, used to be."

"Where's that curvy road?" my sister said. "Isn't there the windiest road in the world, or something?"

I headed up Potrero Hill – "those are the projects where O.J. Simpson grew up" – in order to show them Potrero Rec baseball field, where I hit my only-ever home run, and where they no longer water the grass, for some reason. It was entirely brown.

"Is that the Golden Gate Bridge?" my sister said as we crested the hill and started down toward town.

"No. That's the Bay Bridge," I said. "It's three times as long for two-thirds of the price!" Turned left on 20th and left again at the end, down the poor-man's Lombard Street. They seemed pretty thrilled. Then we drove past Chava's, which burned down about a month ago. "This was one of my favorite Mexican restaurants," I said, tearing up. It was the first time I'd seen it myself, post-disaster.

Luckily nobody, not even me, was all that hungry. We couldn't find mashed potatoes and turkey to save our life – or mine, anyway. Then we found the Garden of Tranquility, at 17th and Kansas, and that seemed like a good place to cheer up.

The Garden of Tranquility. Mandarin-style Chinese food. And almost all the stuff on the menu had hot-and-spicy asterisks next to it. I ordered the Hong Kong Delicatessen ($8.95), which didn't have an asterisk. It was chicken, shrimp, scallops, water chestnuts, and snow peas in a light, mild sauce, and it was just what the doctor ordered: bland.

You know what, I think I better go back in a week, when I can eat again, for real, and drink coffee ... give this place a fair shake.

To be continued ...