Baltimore Heat

In heat the pulse of your streets. I've heard the crack of hard political whips that pinch the air. Cores of human topography, your aging neighborhoods. Your people kick cans counting gravel like jewels, while chiselers roast dogs in the courthouse. Swine flu kills the papers. And already the sky is feverish. In your train tunnels a violinist plays pianissimo. I've seen railroad men search for him along your tracks.* But you are always the sweltering sore of the Atlantic. A rusty mouth for dark ships. A blind brick town of boarded storefronts and ***** flicks, you are buried. Brown bag your way to the last alley. The tenants throw rocks at your windows. The rain has stopped washing your sewers. *From an old legend of railroad workers on the east coast of the United States. Published Black Buzzard Press - 1982