Forget Portland and Austin and Santa Cruz.
Those famously strange places,
where the tourists gawk at local weirdos.
Here is not there.
Here is the place of advice such as:
“When life gives you meatballs put a wig on a dog.”
—True story.
Here is the place where:
“With all good things in life you just have to wipe the bird **** off.”
The place where steel and marble Confederate ghosts,
watch the wealthy renovate their westward homes along a cobblestone road.
Where paintings are propped to rot up in alleys,
and buzzing twenty-somethings on their way back from a show,
shake it and tilt it and carry it home.
—Gilded frame and all.
This is the place of painted concrete where walls are canvases,
and red bricks pop out of the ground,
the tree roots poking through to trip you.
Here’s where the People’s Beer comes from Milwaukee,
but we replaced the R in ribbon with here,
and sell it by the caseload when it rains and when it’s Tuesday.
Where young people go to find themselves getting lost becoming someone else,
remixing history to not admit naivety,
before they’ve been sandpapered through experience.
—To a core.
This is an ink-stained but not splattered place.
Where lines are careful, permanent and abundant,
and on Fridays can cost 13 bucks.
Here is the place where people roam like that restaurant rabbit:
listless and nomadic and stuck.
Where there’s a wild streak in its heart that follows the tracks,
and cuts the city in half.
This is the place that Carvers itself out into cultures,
and you can be from the Bottom,
or proud to be a Rat.
Here is where you night-drive over the bridge,
see the skyline and feel restlessly content.
Here is home.
—For now.