version 2.
“Saint Louis woman,
with her diamond ring
pulls that guy around,
by her apron string…
seems like that gal gotta heart,
like a rock cast in the sea”
“on the spirit of Saint Louis”
Beyond the omniscient plains
Of sparse, wind swept
Illinois,
Beyond Cahokia
Its prehistoric mounds
staring
like lonesome, once-abundant breasts
Beyond East Saint Louis
vacant, crumbling, and embittered
gazing
across the Mississippi barges
Saint Louis
rises out of the water
the Arch
framing
a diminutive, forgotten skyline
a soaring metal tombstone
recalling
the old city, the promise of the new.
Eero’s grand design,
awarded before the bombs dropped on Japan
so meticulous, so ingeniously engineered
triangular trolleys
hoisted the men
hundreds of feet above the earth
as they placed segment by segment
of leg,
with measured, mechanical breaths
an elevator was designed
for the tourists
like the chain-links on a bicycle
tiny white capsules with fiberglass chairs
rushing them upwards
to view the fair city
from portholes of plexiglass
in the labyrinth below the monster’s legs,
the Jefferson Memorial came forth,
outfitted in the finery of my grandmother’s grandmother,
and the thumbprints of those who passed on through-
Laclede, Des Peres, Clark, Cervantes
it was an echo, they said, of all these brave folk
but the keystone
dropped
twenty years later
above a city that had relinquished itself
on account of us versus them,
on account of Charlack versus Ladue,
a color-borne illness
silencing our formerly liberated
French Creole tongues
by way of the five lane highway,
strip malls, fast food, and mono-cultured subdivisions
that crescent slice,
outlined by the monument’s immense shadow
demarcates
have
or
have not
this is the true Gotham
plaintive in Bessie’s Blues
and Ellington’s Toodle-Oo
another twenty years pass
it's the fourth of july
I am approximately 48 inches tall, age seven
the arch is still precisely 630 feet.
southern heat steams
off the concrete steps
feeling faint - holding my father’s fingers
I stand, as close as I can,
without touching its white-hot surface,
and
look up.
with her diamond ring
pulls that guy around,
by her apron string…
seems like that gal gotta heart,
like a rock cast in the sea”
“on the spirit of Saint Louis”
Beyond the omniscient plains
Of sparse, wind swept
Illinois,
Beyond Cahokia
Its prehistoric mounds
staring
like lonesome, once-abundant breasts
Beyond East Saint Louis
vacant, crumbling, and embittered
gazing
across the Mississippi barges
Saint Louis
rises out of the water
the Arch
framing
a diminutive, forgotten skyline
a soaring metal tombstone
recalling
the old city, the promise of the new.
Eero’s grand design,
awarded before the bombs dropped on Japan
so meticulous, so ingeniously engineered
triangular trolleys
hoisted the men
hundreds of feet above the earth
as they placed segment by segment
of leg,
with measured, mechanical breaths
an elevator was designed
for the tourists
like the chain-links on a bicycle
tiny white capsules with fiberglass chairs
rushing them upwards
to view the fair city
from portholes of plexiglass
in the labyrinth below the monster’s legs,
the Jefferson Memorial came forth,
outfitted in the finery of my grandmother’s grandmother,
and the thumbprints of those who passed on through-
Laclede, Des Peres, Clark, Cervantes
it was an echo, they said, of all these brave folk
but the keystone
dropped
twenty years later
above a city that had relinquished itself
on account of us versus them,
on account of Charlack versus Ladue,
a color-borne illness
silencing our formerly liberated
French Creole tongues
by way of the five lane highway,
strip malls, fast food, and mono-cultured subdivisions
that crescent slice,
outlined by the monument’s immense shadow
demarcates
have
or
have not
this is the true Gotham
plaintive in Bessie’s Blues
and Ellington’s Toodle-Oo
another twenty years pass
it's the fourth of july
I am approximately 48 inches tall, age seven
the arch is still precisely 630 feet.
southern heat steams
off the concrete steps
feeling faint - holding my father’s fingers
I stand, as close as I can,
without touching its white-hot surface,
and
look up.