sometimes the sticky-sweet of baltimore air
is a little too much

and screws pop loose like
bullets out of guns

back before the ghetto,
there was a white man who came here

married his cousin, went crazy
nevermore, nevermore

but now the park were he used
to play as a child is a public housing project

where the only poetry is that of puff-puff-pass,
chalk outlines peeling and melting in the midday sun

and a child who speaks to his murdered brother underneath his breath
as he pulls the trigger on his very first gun