Category: labor

radio message to silk stockings

large shattering glass windows
rage coming up the road
coursing action
shockwaves
human lithosphere elastic
subsiding in eerie melody of alarms
then sunlit bayonets
faultlines recharging

gay street at sunrise
(several days of unrest resulting in twelve million dollars of property damage in 1968 first started in the four hundred block of gay street two days after martin luther king jr. was murdered)

things and charity

in a hall of heroes who died in vain
the loyal knew well the spoils of faith
a cardinals call rang out and up
measured
echoing
falling like ash from a smokestack
then billowed back up
pouring out behind the council
and down the wide back stairs
a chorus of misled greed and hate
in awful polyphony with the rich father of mercy

war memorial at sunrise
(in 1966 at a city council meeting at the war memorial, hundreds and hundreds of the two thousand citizens attending booed cardinal sheehan’s advocacy for open housing legislation—which was, for the third time in three years, voted down by the council)

general cargo please

finger piers break-bulk
shorefigurate into yards consolidating sheds
fugitive particulate cornslagate
one-hundred year alignments
squatting bulks of coalorefertilizergrainpetrol leaching awaytide
smother the waterfront industrial vacancy
patiently waiting water as one i love
come with the sea

harbor at sunrise
(in 1964 the maryland port authority took possession of the locust point marine terminal from the b & o railroad)

movingon lookingback

first tomatoes
stew and soup
onions cabbage carrots squash lentils beets
bread and butter
fish and plums
ornate lock in rabbi soul
circular chapel blue green pieces
shining dove in water
liniment in oil
service overseas
walking in flowers to sound of crows

museum and synagogue at sunrise
(the jewish museum of maryland was founded in 1960 to save the lloyd street synagogue from demolition)

exhaling rust

not gary johnstown birmingham youngstown lackawanna
yawata dortmunde-horde port talbott magnitogorsk
morning mist so red
sky orange sun far off night glowing warm
red bellies hot entrails piss wash lightning cold
kitchen grilling steel eel
extruding endlessly
rolling shining exploded ore
burning boiling hotblast
plate structural strip sheet
tonnage crying screaming born
in massive sweating smoldering forceps

former steel mill at sunrise
(sparrows point was the largest steel mill in the world in 1957)

community relations

any person aggrieved
discriminationsegregation
dwelling opportunity
familial person natural
orientation place public
covenant
population composed
care groups practice place
hardship social
arbitrary age chance equal
liberties
untold anxieties
permanent effects

city hall from gay and saratoga at sunrise
(the city council passed an equal employment ordinance in 1956)

call to fascxiom

hoover’s hematemesis
vomited bubbling out windows
down crumblingmortar oxidizedaluminum moldyvinalwood
into buried earthlung springs
mccarthy’s melena
served mysterymeat
in soupkitchen with sugaredwater
largetracing arsenicleadbenzene
nixon’s necrosis
spreading comfortmutation.
wallace’s stent
scalpaling steelsword
excise resist reject from electricbody

wallace statue in druid hill park at sunrise
(dorothy rose blumberg, later convicted and jailed for advocating for better minimum wages and against discrimination and against abuse of civil liberties, was trailed by many fbi agents in 1952 around reservoir hill where she lived, including on her trips to druid hill park)

i believe him

come out here
swollen fruit dumped chemicals long evaporated
into struggle to worklive with respect
and desperation-bred grandiose plans
with new money
from dubai-on-patapsco

from seabury road at sunrise
(cherry hill homes public housing opened in 1945 after the end of world war II—cherry hill is between the middle branch, patapsco river, west patapsco avenue, and 295)