Category: media

skill and horsemanship

sea on land
flying horses galloping around
young crusaders battle mock enemies
ready and wielding
delight and survival in centrifugal force

former amusement park at sunrise
(after protests that started in 1955 and culminated in the trespassing arrest of hundreds of protesters, gwynn oak park, on gwynn oak avenue, desegregated in 1963)

castaways

shark gaping jaws four rows of teeth
expires slowly on deck
tail hatcheted oxygen seeping away
a messenger in viscera champagne blood commingled.
seek sailors foundered in cruelty
carry home a cargo of happiness

shopping center at sunrise
(after protests that started in 1955 and culminated in the trespassing and disorderly conduct arrest of hundreds of students who were jailed for three nights before the city government intervened, the northwood theater, on havenwood road between loch raven boulevard and hillen road, desegregated in 1963)

hurrah

a brutal line drive slices sharply
starting southwest then due east into the sun
over green field raked dust custom
over fading fence into sports shirts called out over radio
strikezone dizzy disappearing
snap go fling take swing bunt
depression safe out in bluesky brightlights
howl swear run jump fight

memorial stadium from shallow center at sunrise
(anheuser-busch forced the browns out of st. louis and other team owners forced bill veeck out of baseball, temporarily, and the orioles landed at memorial stadium in 1954)

three ways

painful pillows hold my head in vice
sloshing radiators overheat bowels
words saidunsaid needle hurting space
in fetal blueskinned sluggish confusion
out to frostyclear dawnlight
moist easterlies
three softslowstepping laps
eutaw baltimore greene lombard
eutaw baltimore greene lombard
eutaw baltimore greene lombard
everabsssorbing cobalt blue
fizzzbuzzz
trainsss leaving sssouth

cobalt blue at sunrise
(the emerson bromo seltzer tower on lombard and eutaw streets was the tallest skyscraper in the city from 1911 to 1923)

pinned duck balling

clipper captains roll shot
to divers rigging-strung overbow.
muggsy uncle robbie delbert frock
transform iron foul flesh
into echoing cedar
smooth bright polished wax
and then
a most modern bowlery
smallball sanctuary

duckpins at sunrise
(louis shecter opened a 100-lane bowling alley on charles street south of lafayette in 1937)

two antionettes

papa and i made a sèvolan
a bamboo krikèts back
joints turned round and hitched with digo thread
skin of silk from manmans maryaj sentiwon
special days it dansed in the van
in the sky with manman
we call it zwazo

papa said an òm fransè made a zwazo-sèvolan
named antionette like me
we went to see it on a very special day
piknik with taso bannann mamba and dous makos
and zwazo
we walked way up to druid hill

first we saw antionette over the vil
so small
we heard her like a marengwen
closer and bigger and bigger and byen fò
flying over our heads
prettier than zwazo
she circled like a lazy lò
then back over the vil

we are laughing still
in rèv i fly her to manman

from druid hill at sunrise
(in 1910 hubert latham flew an antionette-engine powered plane from halethorpe to fort mchenry, over downtown and patterson park, up to north avenue, around eutaw place then around druid hill park, then south, circling over 1217 saint paul street, over downtown and back to halethorpe–to win prize money offered by baltimore sun owners and also by ross r. winans)