a los aficionados

words about our fraught body beautiful
boom
sky in spring egg blue
struggle passion
matadors and gravity
baseballs flying straight pure natural
touching
nobody nothing but here

from the playground at the city at sunrise
(the orioles played to no one once in 2015 after freddie gray was murdered by police for no apparent reason)

fractal starbus

under our tarmac brick and mostly clay
fungi wires seeping pipes measured light
soil thru shoes thru brain in sky
capital entropy underneath
enzymes unshared
instead of leaves stretching sun gathering water together.

so some days
is it the weather my fingers feel like dying
material ceasing to cycle
nutrients not flowing

north avenue from fulton avenue at sunrise
(freddie gray was murdered by police in 2015 for no apparent reason)

up from cabin branch

north of schooners wooden freighters concrete steamers sidewheel barges
violets arbutus honeysuckle pansies chinquapin berries
poplar popland elm elmtree cedar ceddox
twenty eight shades of red orange brick towering
walking back into matrix of soil
rooted revolution

brick faced steel water tower and community garden and industrial port at sunrise
(in 2009 the filbert street community garden became)

seenthrutelescope

my mere embroidering
would be thread around and around inside the square
spiraling
starts meeting ends
absorbing spring

oncoming traffic on steel bridge at sunrise
(hannah brancato, joan m. e. gaither, deletta gillespie, rebecca nagle, kalima young launched the monument quilt in 2013)

positional asphyxiation

usha sings our racist war
is neuro cardio muscular toxic fatal without antidote for the attacked
from armored pits of batons and spray
here in theater we share the suffocation terror
of being stepped sat kneeled on after beaten
at a slower dosage

killing field at sunrise
(tyrone west was murdered in a struggle with police after a traffic stop in 2013 next to chinquapin run park—tawanda jones continues to speak out about police brutality and accountability)

where is the bridge

pictures and stories are windows in walls i don’t see past
a black mirror
warm blood on skin yellow white black
someone washing away toward a vast ocean
i navigate by echo

red black yellow white at sunrise
(the reginald f lewis museum of maryland african american history and culture opened on president and pratt streets in 2005)

trying to believe

that is around the corner
poised to invade and press
killing opportunity
stepping through mirrors and windows i express
my naivety
smells and words in thoughts in harmony
moments stretching toward eternity

former bookstore at sunrise
(red emmas bookstore and coffee shop first opened at 800 saint paul street in 2004)

for jeannettes

slowly toward a city across the harbor
dolls eyes look from thickets
wild ginger dewsteeps pathside
trout lilies greenyellow bottomland
in breathing footfall rhythm
bottlebrush grass laces remnant wood
wild-rye sews small streambanks
purpletop rattles unpaved road
in thinking breathful melody
nodding bur marigolds pool dark mirrors
sneezeweed runs ditches and marsh
frostweed mounds vacant lotmeadows
in warmingchilling chorded nervemuscle
inkberries assort waxwings
winterberries cluster robins
skunk cabbages unfold turkeys
in echoing faint chorus
this year is my passing song
my love the walking minutes

cove at sunrise
(lifelong wagners point resident and activist jeannette skrzcek died in 1998 from liver and colon cancer)