Yankee pride does not pause
for light that holds jails in its jaws.
These Jim Crow zones chew their liquor,
turn mass cells into cities, into Jupiters
who nix their niggers.
The trick of trespass anchors
a Yankee master class in excuse;
not just gingerbread communities
kiboshed at the breakfast hour of use
but all the dead air dead cities introduce.
Who should care
if the haunts are less than fair
if Big Mama’s market leans lean
if there is graffiti-for-grits hardship
on the pennies and roaches between,
if the stomachs of the stoops starve or
highborn street lights slump
while pickled pawn shops plump?
If there is but a multi-million
of the eighty-sixed three-fifths living there,
downhill and out our hair,
choking-to-chilled from dancing with dead air,
who should care?
