Eric Ashford Poet Free verse

City Jump

Black girls mollycoddle,
dandle cranky babies;
some cradled on arm and hip,
some hustled along
on low-riding wheels.

Brown men lounge outside bodega’s,
some soft-soap, play imaginary guitars,
some flash smiles at the slackening sun,
dare it to glitz elsewhere.

White girls sit on the steep stoops
bare knees out and breezing,
smoke with dreamy eyes,
pass comments that time-bomb tick.

From high wires
pigeons rubberneck like parakeets.
Thin city winds dodge washing lines.
Blouses and dresses
grip their hamstrung trapezes.

Black backyard mechanics
lean over engine blocks,
imagine curvy garbs air-dancing,
blown outward from street grates
slow billowed from vents.

The brownstones take a knee,
sweat breaks over rooftops.
A scurry of hands snatch
rumbling city transports
that beep ways to late shifts.

Those that ply less punched-out trades
slip into hankering gaps,
alleys, half-way loitering’s
that flicker into sight
juiced by the scatter and clatter
of pigeon wings.

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