Seventh Street
by Jason Price Everett
Astarte in overalls grins a grin
Of veiled lust and exquisite bedtimes
Somewhere between cement and dusk
Between playgrounds and cemeteries
Puertoriquena with a baby on her arm
Daubed with the umber ashes
Of her daily burnt sky offerings
Smiles a strict star striking
Through the thick twilight impasto
Smeared over the unraveling
Windshield of an empty drive
With ribbons of smoke out the left window
And a gallery of winking eyes on the dash
Flirting with the congealed humidity
Coating the aluminized lives
Of corrugated kids chasing each other
And runaway balls down the tongues of alleys
Of the black women sitting in their plastic chairs
Muttering their faceless imprecations
Of mulatto girls miming abandon
Of white boys in blank cancer cloud.
