FROM GREY’S FERRY, 1999
I’m not sure that what flared
was regulation or if anyone
was on shift or firewatch
or if that ghost-plume after it
was noxious and deadly
but I caught something so violent,
so malevolent, so
unbelievably man-made
it was like the earth and her blue night
recoiled
it was from the bridge—it jumped
up and wracked the view
a belching yellow tinged with
an angry red
and worst of all
the silence after
reaching in all directions like
a dragon, deathly, slow & sure
the office was dark
those granite colored shacks
like husks against
the coke-still sky
cars kept coming up and over
and so, did I, like I’d done
so many times—
climbed that bridge with the city
giving rise
and then falling back as I’d
continue to ride,
knowing death, desolation,
the industrial skyline, not knowing
anything about how the young idea
could ever survive.
This symbolic poem was featured in Shark Reef Literary Magazine before appearing in Love&wages, my fifth full-length collection of poetry and prose and out now though Yellow Lark Press.
I am thrilled to announce that Yellow Lark Press will be releasing No Comebacks this year. Over forty poetic meditations on the champions of American boxing—working class fighters, dancers and jabbers, griots, gamblers and grifters and warriors all. A wonderful collection from the brilliant poet Will Stenberg, No Comebacks is a human tapestry embroidered in blood and stitched with sweat. Step into the ring with No Comebacks this year, through
Yellow Lark Press.