Читать книгу Intrusive Beauty - Joseph J. Capista - Страница 18

SOWEBO

Southwest Baltimore

By the time the boy’s tooth chips and bloody

hair mats his scalp cradled beside the spokes,

which spin and clack, this does not matter.

Not the curbside assault, not the battery.

What matters here is the grace with which

Angelo extends his hand I like your bike

then yanks the boy mid-wheelie, plucks him

by the collar, then bounces him down Hollins

Market’s marble antebellum steps give it to me.

Sure, the pack moves over him like water over

a stone, holds and obscures him, their blows

a tide fists cannot fight. On the fire escape

I look away from this, notice paint flecks

dropping like they know they’re lead or bags

snagged in tree limbs filling with their threats

of flight. I want to shuck the boy from the thin

shell of my closed eyelids. Some stall keeper

swings her push broom, hollers at the pack

to go on home, voice a stroller ramming a wall.