Stately Plump, Buckshot

I

Well, first of all
Newark slumps
its tar-black belly
down just as I’m
finally, correctly
placing myself, though

it will be some
moments before
I can even see
the twisting horns
of that damned
cistual slip,
that inverted
red-paint abrasion,
passing along the
skyway on the right.

II

There is nothing
here, in the town
of Elizabeth,
New Jersey,
but rot and
digestion. It
is a welcoming
prelude, a shut door.

There is nothing here
but torn road, metal,
and check cashings.
The bus stops
look abandoned,
unwelcoming—
forlorn as a dagger
tip or gassed juggler.

This place is
beyond urban
fascination.

As I sit with windows
rolled up, doors unlocked
but waiting for change,
waiting for mercy,
I get the feeling
all the ghosts,
every last one,
wander these streets
in thin coats made
of ice, dangling limbs
appearing lifeless,
flesh-chunks dripping
and chilled bluish.

III

In this pool of
oil, grit, and fumes,
the automobiles are
as poisonously
visual as a long
lonesome downtown Detroit—
post-apocalyptic,
portentous and trite.

There is an image
of a shotgun firing
at a flock of birds
trapped inside a
leaning tower, a
parking garage
both behemoth
and angled toward
the great last sigh.

Along this map
of whimpers and
darting pensions
coexist deserted theatres,
housings stretching along
like chain-links, graveyards,
employment histories,
or this worn blanket
of machinery death.