Eric Ashford Poet Free verse

City Jump

Gaggles of ghetto girls mollycoddle, dandle cranky babies;
some cradled on arm and hip, some hustled along
on low-rolling rides. Granma’s noodle their talk
together with headshakes, busy body elbows akimbo.
Thin men lounge outside bodega’s, soft-soap, 
play imaginary guitars, flash smiles at the slack sun, 
dare it to glitz elsewhere. Daughters and aunts sit 
on the steep stoops bare knees out and breezing,
smoke the tarry air with dreamy eyes, pass their whispered 
words around like ticking tome-bombs. Street pigeons 
rubberneck and preach like pavement parakeets.
Many a backyard mechanic bends over an engine block,
imagines curvy garbs air-dancing, blown outward from 
street grates - hems billowing from vents, hormones hang 
as heavy as greasy clouds. 
The brownstones take a knee, sweat breaks over rooftops.
A scurry of hands work the rumbling city, roads beep ways 
to late shifts. Those that ply less punched-out trades
slip into hankering gaps, the alleys, all the half-way loitering’s
that flicker into sight and are electrically juiced by the scatter 
and clatter of bat wings.
The town steps down into basement bars, warm cars click like clocks,
beer cools the hotheads while on a midnight stage
wild women bump and grind for the sporting crowd.
who like all devoted followers of the tinsel and neon arts
launder old dollars inside the G-strings of plump 
and twerking nymphs.
The town unravels itself then knits its windows out of the dawn
to ply its daydreams shod to walk and strut once more.

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