modo nigga, and the white spookems

i live on the edge of ohio city, and one of the most fascinating things about the west side is the genre splice that is culture over here. sure there is the race camps- latino, black, whites, arabs. but then there are sub genres- whites who hang with just blacks. blacks who date hood white girls, but only hang out with ricans. etc.

i'm sure you get the drift, but what is not melding is astro blacks and everyone else. the art kids are alone in the skittles rainbow. SO. imagine a woman, mid thirties walking at night down Lorain AVE- no one hits on her, but the city itself is threatening . . . nostalgia. lets say she grew up on this very street.

THE SKETCH


II. she hung up but only after. there were no meeting of the minds place for her. being born here should make a difference, but she had been away and time makes things pass, for it is the past. the street split ten meters across the whole dark of it. lit in odd specks from windows, cigarettes. old liquor poured into Fel’s nose, touching at it with her own baggage, the men she had loved and this smell were one it seemed. and she walked on the corner cross blinking the red of cyclops . . . littered in odd glances the whispering lust tasting at her face, body. the military wool of her sea coat keeping every turn the wind made, in. her lips now. Fel had made the mistake of licking their dry and citystruck surface thirty minutes before, and paying for it with an ever widening crack splitting her top lip halves. she had learned to walk fast here. the city with its clasping men, dead eyes, her face. it was this in her head menacing steps now, she pushed it back, turned the corner into distant music. a blue light pitched a john’s shadow and suckapuss counting his day away, bills in hand. her clutching at her nine to five skirt flailing about ankles, his belt and zipper singing his sold shame. if he really was, for Fel thought he should be, for the woman in her street judgment would of sucked it and paid. she lit a square, pushing the tobacco out cool smoke, but she had since stopped for its hard aesthetic and smoked now for the heat it brought. they jane began to rough talk the man, needle him with the role he played. Fel laughed at this, for hadn’t it just been the other way around. the corner spilled further, black against the striking moon. the people, their eyes bright with secret deaths no man ever know. just simple freedom as it would seem to the dead, and they tasted it gulps from the watchers’ shot glasses. light snow had begun to fall, old men scrunched their faces lit each others’ cigarettes and talked on. the young crept for doorways and the out halls of apartment buildings, their mothers out in these same streets, only to come home when the moon gave way, as grandmothers scoured the corners for their daughters’ sons. they had been born to the prize of abandonment, and those who were not mimicked the former, only to begin the string of defeats again.) Fel had been able to compartmentalize these things that glare to the outside, (for it was not really hers to face while others denied it) for it bit into the very heart of it if she did not and the men who had seen her father kill and be killed (and those who killed only to be killed again) saw it as their burden, a solid proof as to why they continued to suffer. Fel made her way to an empty stoop, perching on the second stair to take in herself again. and of her what could this street have told her? her dance was held in the eyes of these women, everything in them a haughty up and moving with gravity instead and still chasing each other with high laughter. three of them to match the three penny men, their nickel stories pitched high on broken shoulders, their faces lifted with each note the talking grave.) when had she stopped knowing them. she hadn’t. and could not place it. ‘Skrow could place it.’ she said aloud, but still to no one. she had always knew them as hers, but still they were not. and of their color which shade was her? and of their death, which life was owed to her. (and that would not be solved today. for it is not in stories) it was to be kept just out of reach. dangling above them as their place trembled beneath. she knew that she had been here, and it had turned her into . . . ? she had not noticed the almost a hundred blocks she’d walked, and the time stood still for the sun had long since gone down and night flowed hour into hour – the same. a bent man with his bags and junky walk sat beside her. his metal keys stapled to his denim jacket front, and the stench cologne clashed with his eyes, (which he blinked now, then again.) he had no teeth. – ‘ you got no watch?’ he drooled. and wiped it up with a tie (handkerchief), holding it to his face, then blinking. she ignored him. and inched away(politely). ‘ you got no watch. you stuck here? or you lookinggggg? ‘ he turned his head the gray strands of hair on end. ‘ you got some nerves . . . we talk or take. ‘ and turned his head and gave her a sniff. yeah. thanks. Fel said, dryly adding, and you shouldn’t talk when you take. and smiled. a couple of less creative sentences from the bum had Fel mumbling, “what a fucking night. this shit grows on trees over here.” and he was gone. walk.



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