I75 Downtown, Cincinnati
Property boundaries overlaid with satellite imagery. Data Source: CAGIS (Cincinnati Area Geographic Information System) 2022
A bundle of highway ramps snake and weave like veins
cut through the graded dirt. Three city blocks, measured by
the platt maps that outline a history of property lines
and every row house, social hall, and corner deli which once stood here.
Parcels of prosperity for Southern immigrants, they float above
the freeway, like ghosts haunting the land that belonged
to Black families, taken by government officials,
just one mile across the Ohio into freedom.
Welcome home to your back garden: a barren median,
your church, a bent guard rail, your playground:
asphalt divided by white dashed lines. A neighborhood
razed in the name of breathing air and dollars into the dense urban grid.
Today, an often clogged artery, lined with Semis
delivering vats of light beer, processed chicken,
and the American Dream to anyone still asleep.
Dumpster Balloons
As I opened the dumpster
to empty the week’s trash, birthday balloons rose
to greet me, as if bonded to the lid,
charged with anticipation.
I scrambled to shut them down
yet they kept rising, obedient to unseen forces
brazen they squirmed toward
the black open air.
How vast the continuum of emotions
permissible each moment on earth.
A Ukrainian couple proclaims their vowels
while dressed in army fatigues,
flower petals decend upon the same ground
pierced each night with metal-cased shells.
Shirtless boys giggle while dribbling a ball
across the dusty floor of refugee camps.
A celebration for being alive,
a witness to one more orbit,
even with the hurt, the bitterness,
the weight we carry.