"I have a city to cover with lines." - d.a. levy

submissions

march 8, 2010

The Luck 'O the Irish

Back in ’26, the handsome
Irish-American mayor
of the “Cicero suburb of Cleveland”
was indicted for violating
the Prohibition Laws.

Ten cartons labeled “ale”
and four 5-gallon cans containing alcohol
were confiscated in a raid at his home.

His wife claimed she didn’t know
the raiders were in the house
until they entered the bedroom
where she was resting.

The cartons and the cans were found
under the baby’s bed.

“ I was keeping
the beer and alcohol as evidence
seized from a truck
last week.”

One of his cohorts,
who happened to be
the village dry agent,
was charged with
impersonating a federal officer
while ostensibly in pursuit
of a truckload of beer,
which subsequently eluded him
at West 73rd and Lorain.

“ Hold that truck for me,
I’m a federal agent.”

His Honor,
known to go by the name of George O’Malley,
was arraigned for possessing smuggled goods:
18 cases of Canadian ale,
which dry agents traced to his home
after they had mysteriously disappeared
from the town hall.

An ouster petition accused him of
intoxication while in office;
possession of liquor;
accepting a $1,000 bribe;
malfeasance…

And a couple of minor offenses.

-- brian dorsey

feb. 28, 2010

onward cleveland soldiers

they march
in unison
these sons
of the union
onward cleveland soldiers
your death waits
like a birthday present
that you never
planned to open.

feb. 21, 2010

under my skin

it’s a form of subtle persuasion
the smells of the city
on the shores of a frozen lake
the revelers retreating after
the band has finishes their final riff
the memories the sounds carry
onto Euclid Ave. and then as far as West 6th
an after-hours walk along the river
for conversation and late-night coffee

we dodge the swirling snowflakes
and the Lake Erie windy bluster
as it slaps our cheeks and asses,
to remind us that its there
looking for the car
we head back to more familiar ground
yet it doesn’t escape me
that you’ve gotten under my skin
in a way I hadn’t expected

your buckeyes… oh.. your buckeyes
sweet and terminally sinful
your Towers and evening skyline,
glowing city streets that hover
in the alleys of my mind
your bakeries and backwaters
bookshops, museums… and Tremont
your Chinese dumplings
served up steaming
the aroma of your Italian pastries
served up fresh... am I dreaming?
with a sidewalk view
they have a way of lingering
fragrant and inviting to a stranger

you’re an art haven, a lakeside matron
but you’ve become much more
than just the one night stand
you’ve reeled me in,
make no mistake it took a while
you’ve become an acquired taste
the unsuspecting warm embrace
that caught me by surprise
beckoning me to come, again and again
to explore you, know you and
feel satisfied by your subtle grace

I’ve explore your curves and byways
straddled your flow and your riverbank
and know I can never let you go
because oh Cleveland….
you’ve gotten under my skin

-- c. m. brooks

feb. 14, 2010

Better Luck Next Time

“This isn’t heaven,”
said Grandfather,
“ This is Cleveland.”
- The Stupids Die

I’ve never been to hell,
But I’ve lived in Cleveland.
I’ve never been to heaven, either.
The closest I ever came was Hot Dog Heaven!

I’ve had visions of
a North Coast Hades,
and it’s like:

Sitting in the splintered bleachers
of old Municipal Stadium,
with an incurable case of Indians Fever,
watching the cellar-dwelling Featherheads
lose forever.

Getting towed to the City Impound Lot,
concealed below an imploded air bag
for eternity.

Disappearing into the sinkhole
of a Rockwell Avenue water main break,
never to resurface.

Floating among hundreds
if not thousands
of dead sheepheads
in the storm sewer runoff
called Lake Eerie.

Listening endlessly to
a tape-recorded message
from the United White People’s Party,
delivered by a revolting
West Side dicktator.

Drinking lukewarm P.O.C.
at Judy’s White Oak,
palais du punch extraordinaire,
desperately trying to avoid a shiner.

Waiting in vain for the Rapid
on a snow-belted,
25-below-zero day,
until even hell freezes over.

Hopelessly combating ravenous
Canadian Soldiers
on a sweltering summer night,
with no screens,
no air conditioning,
and 95 percent humidity.

This isn’t heaven!
This is Cleveland!

--Brian Dorsey

feb. 7, 2020

freezing drizzle

what is the place
of the name of the
ocean, the lake & the
river, a notion i did
not take into consideration,
on a curb in tremont
she sits with her face in
her hands, i don't know
her, but i know exactly
completely perfectly
the way she feels

-- michael gabriel

jan. 31, 2010

freezing drizzle

It has been said one can't step
into the same river twice.

Today
they found the frozen body
of a woman near the railroad tracks
where Train and Vega Avenue
intersect,
a Canton man is on trail for the revenge
murder of his own children and his
ex wife's mother.
In Loudenville, Ohio two cats were killed
by arrows drawn by
the next door neighbor.
The musicians of the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra
have put down their instruments
on strike over their contract

Haiti digs out of her rubble,
buries her dead and tries to
feed the living.
Hysteria comes and goes
another day comes to pass,

Where has all the music gone?

You speak of rivers, my Beloved,
exigencies and crosses
prayers and lonely dreams,
we are they who carry torches
in the elongated night of our blindness

I am weary, my Love.
I seek comfort in your arms.

All I have for you is this skin, these bones,
this freezing drizzle inside the marrow of
my life.

-- anna ruiz

jan. 25, 2009

hey man that's my blood

electric emmett
says he was fightin'
with his girlfriend
when she picked up a
scissors, stabbed him
in the back, he reached
behind him and felt
something wet, looked
down at his fingers &
exclaimed, "hey man,
that's my blood!" electric
emmett, livin' in one of
them old houses near
e. 65th & lexington,
staggered out into the
street, & beheld the
magic of eternal love

-- markk

jan. 18, 2010

South of Heaven

The city’s still starving
But I’m much too tired now

To cover every corner with
Lines, letting each word
Echo like the pain from
Its ghetto alley ways

And the piss filled
Tenement halls,
The once alabaster
City and negro screams

How can I cover
With lines what has
Already been destroyed?

Chasing Kerouac’s
Shadow, wishing I
Could write like
Jim Carroll-
I’m running so fast
So fast but I can’t
I can’t keep up

I’m nowhere near
The man enough
To resurrect you,
CLEVELAND,
My own dark corner
Of the American
Experiment

Seeking redemption
Amidst the stifling
Absurdity of a mad
Sad world, the gods
Are fucking us-
Let’s find a way
To fuck them back

But this is Cleveland-
The gods never
Save you.

We’re always
South of heaven

--Aedan Cagney

jan. 4, 2010

if the biograph theatre was at playhouse square

she was wearing red
when i walked out of
the theatre at playhouse
square, nowhere to go,
elliot ness gunned me down
in the dark of the alley, no,
i was not the butcher
of kingsbury run, i was
a poet with a fedora, &
my crime was these words.

-- michael gabriel

jan. 4, 2010

a blanket of sorrow

if you shut up
& listen instead
of talk, you will
hear the words
that moses cleaveland
spoke on a frozen
january day so long
ago, when nothing
was promised &
the orange burn
of the fire was like
pigment upon
white skin, & all
tomorrows were
waiting to be woven
like a blanket of sorrow:
"i think i will piss
upon yonder tree."

-- markk

dec. 27, 2009

the end

oh cleveland,
why do u hate me,
u eat me for dinner
in the final lamplight
of a destroyed year
i plead my case in
yr court of high tears,
& throw myself on the
mercy of the judge,
i forget everything
i ever knew about u

-- michael gabriel

dec. 21, 2009

2 My Home Town

CLEVELAND,

I gave to you the words
For poems that no one
Else would write
I told of
Your blacks
Your whites
Your saints
And your junkies
Of midnight

I wrote of
Your love
Your rage
Your pain
And your decay

And from the stoop
Of a Baptist church
On E 93rd, to a
Drinking stool in a
West Park bar,
I saw it all

I let the world know
You were struggling
But still standing tall

And yet you’ve given me
Almost nothing
In return

They don’t even show
Me love in the
Old neighborhood
Something about how
Prophets are never
Welcome in their
Home town

-- Aedan Cagney

dec. 14, 2009

This Poem is a Public Service (for d a levy)

Listen when I talk you little nothings
Little zinc-heads in the cupboards
By the rattling plates
And the nutpicks and the mallets
And the napkins and the forks --
When it comes it will come
As a surprise.

Inconspicuously they are laying tracks
Up every porch of every home in this city.
Into each room and every squeamish store.
Through the backdoors of slaughterhouses
Where sides of nothings, rubber carpets
Hang on hooks
Circling the sour and bloodstained floors
Like pedestrians.

Stop doing what you're doing.
Stop tapping your feet.
Stop asking can you be excused.
And what are you going to do about it,
For your lusterless bodies?
And your partners? And the children?

By now you have noticed no one signs on
For the detail of love anymore.
They say get yourself another stooge.
Let this one have the dirty job. Am I
Your slave?
It was called cooperation.

At the depot boxes and boxes of kits of lives
Pile up on the loading dock
Squealing for hands.
You can't count on the help
To lift a single finger.
We expect a little something
A special extra some kind of bonus
For his type operation.
You're better off dead
The rich get richer.

At night freight trains cross state lines
So no one can see the lines of giant zeroes
On their backs, three to a flat.
Each one weighs tons and enemy agents
Are snapping them up,
They think they're our replacements

The other tracks they let decay
Like rows of teeth a thousand miles long.
The enamel starts to chip, the sugar
Does its work.
Between the lean and rotting ties
Grown dogs howl
Like flapping cloth.

You blind little ninnies cry for sweets.
You ten ton babies kick at your baskets.
You've outgrown your usefulness,
Why don't you go home?
Who can take care of you in times like these?
Who can put up with the things that you do?
If you knew a trade --
If you worked with your hands --
There must be someplace else?

Monday they stuffed my secretary in the outgoing file.
Followed by a cut in pay.
Thursday my office turned up missing.
I miss my memoranda.
Now they're asking for my shoes back.
It has just been announced, we have
Run out of weekends.

I am lifted on a stretcher and carried
Out of court.
A paper airplane where my eye should be.
I had taken my complain to the top of the top.
For a judge he struck me as immature.

Plain and simply we caught up too far too fast.
Now no one is safe in his own suit of clothes.
No one is secure for a second.
The machines have started to nag
They say
Well
We bitches are hard to satisfy.

What we have in mind is a generation
Of animals.

Desperate losers mechanical slapstick
You dumb seamsters you have snipped
Your antennae.
What happened to your sense of humor?
You've been trapped for days
Between floors on an escalator.
Think. Everything
You see you make gauze.

Businessmen walk the streets
Wet with expressions of loss.
They stop and speak with everyone they see.
Where are all the buildings,
They want to know.
There used to be buildings.
Hold my hand, I couldn't bear
To jump from a tree.
Good sir can you direct me
To the nearest revolution?

Listen you dumb nothings brown nettles
Red gristle dumb people.
The housewives in our city are
Grinding their arms into sausage.
All our shops are boarded up.
Newspapers lick our streets and broken glass
Makes pretty sparkles.
The president has taken to wearing his shirts backwards,
He's taken to giggling.
You can beat this thing, he says,
And explodes.

What nonsense, this town
Is crawling with reptiles and pimps
And you know it.
Each one of them busies himself through the night
Plotting your underground surprise.
You luggage was sent on ahead.
A list of patrons is circulating,
People you spoke with only this morning
Have signed up for double
Triple hitches.

At night mechanics rub burnt cork on their cheeks
And drum till dawn on the hoods of junked autos
With hammers and socket wrenches.
Children all around the world have
Stopped falling down. Their nails are clean.
They've stopped hurting themselves
And stopped needing you.
In your company they have started
Crossing their legs.

If you hadn't realized
If this comes as a shock
If you didn't know by now
Things are coming to a head.
The lonely beast you keep in the cellar
That wails and wails
Only last night pulled all the red pins from his map.
All your lovers have written your name
A dozen times and torn it up again.
Every stone in every field takes careful aim
And flies. Things are getting
Sticky everywhere.

What can you do, you want to know,
To help yourself through this difficult transition.
How to defend yourself or explain yourself
When what has been heading your way all your life
Arrives with its vengeance.
Are you prepared, the trains are pulling out
Everywhere, bound for unknown destinations.
Fuses are lighting in every bedroom.
There has not been a successful suicide
In weeks, and you sit
Playing with your hands in your lap.

What is it oh what is it, oh,
The name of the song, our song
That's been stuck in your head like a rusty needle
For what seems like years.
Are you coming? Are you going?
You pitiful people you
Tiny nothings your fractured lives
You can't rise up from, can't speak out of,
Can't pierce the membrane that you
Call home, can't break
The quiet that's killing all that you love.

This poem is a public service.
When it speaks to you
Listen.

(1974)

-- Michael Finley

dec. 7, 2009

relentless opaque

winter now weighs upon me
like a freight train sneaking
into the The Flats, returned
only recently to its industrial
roots as it waits in silence for
resurrection, in athens we
used to put pennies on the
the railroad tracks, & the
trains would reduce them
to copper pancakes, eyes
wide like little kids, but in
cleveland the nights are
colder & the last taxi just
left tower city, i see it rolling
across the detroit-superior
bridge, in an atmosphere
of osmosis, relentless, opaque

-- michael gabriel

nov. 30, 2009

nothing's burning

there is nothing burning today
the smoke has vanished into
thin air like amelia earhart,
like hiroshima. my heart is
finished with its drama of
burning, the case i make for
redemption, renewal, the
transitive nature of my bleak
contemplation. the coals have
faded to black, carbon &
gray ash. i commit this residue
to the fangs of the earth. on
a street corner in a ruined
cleveland neighborhood, i
ask questions & get no reply,
no sparks, not even the faintest
trace of ignition. my father smoked
old gold cigarettes. when he lit one
the smoke always drifted in the
direction of my face, no matter
where i stood, or which way
the fugitive wind was blowing

-- markk

nov. 23, 2008

unemployed

i sit at a desk &
talk to this woman
who has a job, sees me
as a number, another
dark statistic, my reign
is over, in this city
where i landed 20
years ago, in a warehouse
in downtown cleveland,
where i have worked
for the man, for myself,
my family & friends, now
i wait out the days like
a chunk of Ray's Sausage
in the market that no
one will buy, because
right next door, all
of the bodies of my dreams
are buried in shallow
graves, murdered by me

-- markk

nov. 16, 2009

i admit it

i admit it i know nothing about humans
much less myself
have we become oblivious
to our neighbors
on our little patch of 30x120
is the tv blaring,
the arguments so loud,
our lives so hurried
that our neighbor
on Imperial Street
buries 11 bodies
and we never heard even one
cry?
i'm sick to death of society,
i know not how serial killers
are formed
i know not what went wrong
in their synapsing mind,
some will call them
evil, some will say crazy
as a fox
i just know that if we don't know
what is happening next door,
it's way too close for comfort.

-- anna ruiz

nov. 9, 2009

A Cleveland Cacophony

Several days ago I listened to
the Cleveland Orchestra
and Franz Welser-Moest
play so well in Linz.

“One of the ten best orchestras in the world,”
“An extraordinary musical experience,”
“A wonderful concert evening,”
the local critics raved.

In the very same newspaper
I read that Cleveland’s
not doing so well at all
on Imperial Avenue.

Just another twisted movement
in a Cleveland cacophony.

-- Brian Dorsey

nov. 2, 2009

cleveland ouch!

ouch cleveland, hits me
where it hurts, ouch cleveland a
punch in the gut, the best of
times, the worst of times,
ouch cleveland, a knife
in the back, a kick in the
crotch, ouch cleveland
cleveland ouch!

-- michael gabriel

oct. 18, 2009

Humbuckers

Just a pickup band,
after all these years
and countless miles,
back in the garage,
where it all started,
The only audience,
a handful of neighbors
twisting in the driveway.

But from the first drum riff,
as crisp as the October night,
the joker conned the thief
and it was four decades earlier
with the bass shaking the walls,
Tom howling tunes at the sky
and my antique Big Muff box
making my '72 Fender as smooth as ever.

And yes,
we're a bunch of old men now,
with bad knees, stiff fingers,
and smoke-graveled voices,

has-been's and never-were's,
purveyors of long forgotten songs,
but the moon was bright,
the beer was iced,

and there was rock
and roll
and rhythm
and blues
and even though there ain't no surf in cleveland , brother,
a couple neo-noir instrumentals
that we nicked from The Aqua Velvets.

What more could you want?

-- j.e. stanley

oct. 24, 2009

Revelations after Stopping the Car for Partridges

The cancer invaded her
and even though
they tore it out,

she feared it would reappear
in some far away territory
her doctor never visited
like that city in the Yukon
where you can only arrive by boat.

She is afraid to leave the house
after dark in Grosse Pointe
and she imagines me
in a ditch by the side of the road
when I travel to Cleveland

But, I still want to rise
above these towns, these smokestacks
and throw the dynamite
to forge my path.

She doesn't know
that I feel my lymph nodes
when I wake at 2 am
and sit up in the dark
or that I stopped the car
on a dirt road
just to watch
a pair of partridges pass by.

-- Heather Ann Schmidt

2009 poem o' the week archive

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