ODE TO U.S. 1, HOWARD COUNTY, MARYLAND

Asphalt and concrete,

rutted, cracked, pot-holed, patched,

curbed and uncurbed,

planned and unplanned,

junkyards, repair shops,

used car dealers, new car dealers,

warehouses, truck stop, rail yard,

gritty bars that open at six when the night shift ends,

gas stations, liquor stores,

shopping centers, restaurants,

motels for travelers passing through,

motels for the suburban poor,

travelers’ cabins whose residents never leave,

trailer parks, apartments,

new homes, old homes,

neighborhoods.

You proclaim your presence

with a cacophony of signs,

disorderly and non-compliant.

You do not celebrate your diversity,

which arose from the dull practicality of life.

You are not sexy like I-95,

fast moving, designed for speed from city to city.

You are not beautiful like the Parkway,

stone bridges and tree-lined;

nor are you efficient like Route 29,

moving the outer suburban elites

to work and play without wasting time.

You are the step-sister—

once first, now least.

You are the old hag,

coughing and wheezing

through diesel fumed days,

from Elkridge to Laurel,

carrying the burdens.

You have no pretense to beauty;

no tree-lined verges;

no manicured medians.

You are rough-edged, ugly, and stained.

Your open spaces are empty lots

and forest tracts waiting to be bulldozed

and opened for business.

Now we are changing you,

like we changed ourselves.

We are making you orderly and neat,

sweeping away the dross,

like we swept it from elsewhere in the county.

The tide of suburban conformity

is rising over you,

parcel by parcel;

redeveloped;

standardized

commodified.

When the transformation is complete—

the removal of the old,

the decrepit,

the unwanted,

the nonconforming—

what will you be?

What will we be?

SHE

She probably was not there
when the officials came through
to warn that the dam's gates would be opened.

She probably did not see the notice
in the local paper since it is not
delivered under the bridge where she lived.

They found her body in the woods
downstream from the bridge.
She was on the news that night.

Jessup, republished

My poem, "Jessup," has been republished on Social Shutter, a blog devoted to social issues seen mainly through the lens of a camera.  Mine is the first poem published on the site, and one of the few items posted by someone other than the editors.  The poem was originally published in You Are Here:  The Journal of Creative Geography.  You can find it at http://socialshutter.blogspot.com/2012/11/jessup.html.

Quoth the Raven: "Two More!"

I just got word on Saturday that two poems have been accepted for publication in the Loch Raven Review.  This is a Baltimore area journal, published somewhere in the vicinity of Loch Raven Reservoir, which is located north of the city.  How fitting, given that the two poems to be published-- "The Tire Swing" and "Visiting Day"-- were inspired by scenes in the Baltimore area, albeit south of the city.  Both poems are part of my series of poems set in the vicinity U.S. 1 in Howard County.  "The Tire Swing" is set on the site of a former trailer park on Gorman Road in the North Laurel and Savage areas.  The trailer park is long gone, and now so is the tire swing-- the site was finally cleared to make way for luxury townhouses.  The idea for "Visiting Day" came as I bicycled along Brock Bridge Road past the prison.  The usual line of people were there at the gate, waiting to go in to visit family members and friends incarcerated there.  The young girl sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, head in hands, watching me as I rode past caught my attention and stayed with me through my ride.

Both poems should appear on the Loch Raven Review's website within two weeks. 

U.S. 1 Corridor Poems (update)

In my post of November 6, 2010 (see http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4675306312689632650#editor/target=post;postID=2489485122221987711) I wrote about my series of poems focused on the U.S. 1 corridor in Howard County and the ideas and scenes that influenced those poems.  Since that time I have added three poems to the series--"The Food Truck," "The Old Man at the Corner," and "U.S. 1, Howard County, Maryland."  In addition to "Jessup," which was published in 2006 in You Are Here:  The Journal of Creative Geography, two of the poems have been published or accepted for publication:   "The Food Truck" in the Spring 2012 issue of Poetry Quarterly, and "Patuxent River Story," in issue #4 of Symmetry Pebbles.

"The Food Truck" focuses on the Hispanic food trucks that can be found along the Route 1 corridor, catering to the many workers in the warehouses, industrial parks, or gathering hoping for day labor opportunities.  It combines the presence of the trucks with thoughts relating to the loss of livelihood by farmers in Mexico, put out of work by the flood of cheap corn from the United States after NAFTA took effect.  I thought it fitting to have a farmer running the food truck.  In Mexico, he grew food and provided for his family.  No longer able to compete, he heads north and provides for his family back home by providing food for workers.

In writing "The Old Man at the Corner" I had in mind the men who can be seen panhandling from time to time at major intersections in the Jessup area; in particular, the man I would see at the intersection of the off-ramp from I-95 and MD Route 175 west.  I have been part of the line-up of people in cars waiting for the light to change and trying to avoid eye contact.  It's easy to dismiss such people as wanting to avoid work, or trying to earn easy money by begging from others, but when I think about it, I can't believe that most people eagerly turn to panhandling.  Both this and "The Food Truck" came out of my thinking about what I would do or how I would feel if I was in a similar situation, if I had no other prospects or hope for feeding my family.

The last poem, "U.S. 1, Howard County, Maryland," is more of an ode to the road and the corridor, comparing it with other parts of the county-- parts that have better "curb appeal" if you will.  U.S. 1 was the original highway through the county, connecting Howard with Baltimore and Washington and other points north and south.  That role as "Main Street of the East Coast" has been usurped by I-95.  U.S. 29 has taken over the role of major local highway, connecting the nicer, more upscale communities within the county, and passing through Columbia, which can be seen as Howard County's "downtown."  U.S. 1, in many ways, has been forgotten... that is, except by those who find it to be an anomalous "eyesore" requiring a makeover to bring it in line and in compliance with the rest of the county.

Up by Four More in the First Quarter

Well, the first quarter of 2012 has gone well!  In addition to the three poems published in The Copperfield Review, I just got word that I'll have two poems in issue # 4 of Symmetry Pebbles-- "Walking Along the River Fuji, the Poet Basho Finds a Child Abandoned by Its Parents" and "Patuxent River Story."  Although the word "river" in each poem's title suggests some symmetry, the two are quite different.  "Walking Along the River Fuji," consists of two tankas, with the whole poem inspired by a passage in Basho's "Records of a Weather-exposed Skeleton" in which Basho and his traveling companion come along a small child abandoned by its parents.  I've read Basho's book a couple times, but what struck me this last time was the matter-of-factness with which Basho leaves the child behind rather than taking it with him.  "Patuxent River Story" is from my U.S. Route 1 series, and is about the prostitutes that are pushed from one county to another in the Laurel, MD area.

I've also got two poems that will appear in an upcoming issue of Poetry Quarterly-- "The Food Truck," which also is part of my U.S. Route 1 series, and "Outside the Abundant Life Chapel," which draws upon a brief moment when I stopped outside the Abundant Life Chapel in Charleston, WV while walking to the Charleston Friends' (Quakers') Meeting.  Given how clearly I could hear the thumping bass while standing on the sidewalk, I can only imagine the amplitude of spirit that must have been present in the chapel.

You can find these poems here on my blog.  I'll post the links when the journals are published.

THE FOOD TRUCK

[Published in Poetry Quarterly, Spring 2012]

THE FOOD TRUCK


The immigrant in his food truck,
parked at the edge of the lot,
sells reminders of home--
pupusas, tamales, tortillas--
to hungry laborers coming off shifts,
or waiting for work in the morning light;
to men whose families wait back home
for the monthly remittance,
or the fee for the coyotes to bring them North.

His foods remind him
of the land he farmed
and the corn he grew,
like his ancestors,
long before the Spanish,
and before the flood
of cheap corn from America.

His farm is now a memory;
views of his fields replaced by
parking lots, construction sites,
and the faces of men like him,
looking for something to take them back home.

JESSUP

[published in You Are Here:  The Journal of Creative Geography, 2006, and again on Social Shutter, November 2012]

JESSUP


The air a mix of diesel and spices

at the concrete and asphalt corners

of Routes 1 and 175.

Commodities flow in and out

of the road-bound harbor,

from container ships in Baltimore,

unloaded in hours by man and crane

(a job that once took days and hundreds),

to trucks laden with seafood and produce

for the restaurants of Washington and Baltimore.

This is the harbor in suburbia,

truck stop and warehouses,

wholesalers and cheap motels,

and the shipping channel moves down the interstate.

Here is where the spices are packed

that once were packed in Baltimore

when its harbor filled with ships

from Asia and the Caribbean;

Central American banana boats;

buy boats filled with oysters and crabs

and produce from the Eastern Shore.

Here is where the sons and grandsons

of longshoremen who worked the boats

spend their days in warehouses
driving forklifts in and out of trailers
for barely a living wage,
or spend their days behind iron bars
and the razor wire fences
of the penitentiary

(another extension of Baltimore).

Here is where the prostitutes
work the lot from truck to truck,
where drivers find a home-cooked meal

     and a quick fuck.

Here are the suburban slums—

trailer parks and cheap motels

where families crowd a single room

rented by the week; and next door

lovers tryst on the half-day rate;

children play amid the diesel fumes,

suburban dreams a world away.

This is Jessup, where we find
the city’s rhythms in modern form;

the flow of goods in and out,

the city’s dirt, sights, and smells,
banished from the old harbor
now washed clean and sanitized,
a playground for suburbanites

who cannot stand the thought of Jessup.

U.S. 1 Corridor Poems

Five poems in this collection are situated along the US 1 corridor in Howard County, Maryland and vicinity. These poems are: "Jessup," "The Tire Swing," "Patuxent Story," "Route 1 Bridge," and "Visiting Day." My interest in the Route 1 corridor between Baltimore and Washington is both professional and literary. From a geographical standpoint (I am a geographer by training and profession), the US 1 corridor in Howard County contrasts with the rest of the county. Much of the industrial and warehousing activities in the county are located in the corridor because of easy access to I-95, BWI Airport, and the port of Baltimore. Because of the emphasis on commercial and industrial zoning and development, residential properties tend to be of lower value. Howard County is one of the wealtiest counties in the United States, but the wealth and high average household income of the county masks low incomes, poverty, and households ekeing out a living. That side of life in Howard County can be found along the US 1 corridor. It is here that we find most, if not all, of the remaining trailer parks in the county; individuals and families living in motels; homeless living in tents on the margins of industrial parks. Geographers tend to focus on differences between places, regions, and landscapes; the contrast between the US 1 corridor and the remainder of the county intrigues me.


My literary interest in the corridor began with a desire to write an essay about Jessup for a newsletter focusing on urban geography. With easy access to I-95, Baltimore, and Washington, Jessup has become the locus of warehousing, industrial, and wholesaling activity in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. There is a large wholesale produce and seafood center, and a large concentration of warehousing and light industry. Because of this activity, Jessup is also a transportation center, with large numbers of trucks carrying goods into and out of the area. Much of the activity that occurs in Jessup once occurred in Baltimore; the activities of the port and the central city are now located in the suburbs. Jessup is an apt example of how the economic base of many central cities has shifted to the suburbs. As I drafted my essay, though, I struggled with capturing the sights, the smells (spices, diesel fumes), and the gritty character of Jessup. Academic-style writing just couldn't capture the feelings I wanted to convey. Poetry worked, and the poem "Jessup" resulted. I published "Jessup" in 2006 in You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography.


Since that time, I've looked for other topics drawn from the corridor. My more recent poems, "The Tire Swing," "Patuxent Story," "Route 1 Bridge," and "Visiting Day," are the result of ideas and observations that I've had in mind or drafted on paper for some time now. "The Tire Swing" focuses on the residents of a small trailer park that was sold by the land owners to developers. The residents, who owned their trailers, but only rented the lots on which they stood, were forced out. They attempted to buy the property and remain on the land, but the lure of profit and the neighboring community's opposition to trailer parks, led to the closing of the trailer park. It is a good example of suburban gentrification, analogous to what we see happening in the inner cities.

"Patuxent Story" can be read as a poem about any unwanted group of people, pushed from one jurisdiction to another. I purposely left it somewhat vague as to who the "they" are in the poem. The people I had in mind, though, are the prostitutes who work the area along US 1 and around the race track in the Laurel area. Three counties come together here-- Anne Arundel, Howard, and Prince George's. The cheap motels are in Howard; the race track in Anne Arundel; the bars in Anne Arundel and Prince George's. This side of life is largely unknown to most of the local residents, but if you read the crime reports in the local paper, you realize that the police in the various jurisdictions push the prostitutes (and their clientele) from one county to another. It seems to be an endless cycle of movement, not unlike an eddy in a river. The Patuxent River flows through this area, forming the boundary between the various counties; it seemed like an apt analogy of life flowing onward, but this cohort of people trapped, unable to flow freely.

"Route 1 Bridge" began developing about the same time as "Patuxent Story," and focuses on the homeless men who live under the bridge that crosses the Patuxent between Howard and Prince George's Counties. These men can be seen from time to time along Route 1, outside the diners and bars in Laurel. Their precarious existence is made more so when the Washington Sewer and Sanitation Commission opens the gates on the dam upriver after heavy rains to release excess water from the reservoir. The level of the Patuxent rises substantially, flooding out the men's sleeping areas under the bridge.


"Visiting Day" describes the scene I would see when bicycling along Brock Bridge Road past the penitentiary in Jessup. Every Saturday morning, women and children would be standing outside the gate, lined up waiting for entry to the facility to visit with husbands, boyfriends, fathers. One morning, as I bicycled past, a young girl sat watching me, and I couldn't help but wonder what she thought-- her father in prison and me free to ride past. The scene has stuck with me for quite some time.

I will continue to look for topics and develop poems describing life in the US 1 corridor. Please feel free to comment.

VISITING DAY

[Published in the Loch Raven Review, Fall 2012]

VISITING DAY

Outside the fence,
women and children stand
below the tower,
the bored guard watching
the Saturday morning routine.
Mothers, wives, girlfriends
stand silent and stoic,
arms crossed, waiting.
Children talk and play
with their Saturday morning friends,
filling the time until the gate opens,
waiting, as they wait each Saturday
for their time to visit
sons, husbands, boyfriends, fathers,
to sit at a visitor’s room table,
hold hands, hug, talk,
just like the rest of us
at the end of each day,
after work and school,
around the dinner table.

Outside the fence
women wait and children play,
all doing their time
as they do each Saturday
under the gaze of the guard,
waiting for the gate to open,
this scene a repeat of last weekend's
and the weekend before that...

At the end of the line
a young girl sits,
back to the fence,
head in hands,
watching traffic pass.

PATUXENT RIVER STORY

[Published in Symmetry Pebbles, issue #4]

PATUXENT RIVER STORY


They flow, county to county,
pushed by tides of indignation,
slowed by pools of indifference,
unseen, unnoticed, unknown by most
(who would be appalled if they knew),
but they are there,
at the bars near the track,
on the corners near the cheap motels,
in the parking lot behind the diner.

They flow, county to county,
in a jurisdictional eddy,
Anne Arundel, Howard, Prince George’s,
pushed by the police from one to the other,
one to the other,
one to the other
in a slow, continual cycle.

Do we care to know who they are?
Or, what they want?
They flow in a different channel,
dead ended,
caught like so much debris behind a strainer,
eddied, swirling, stopped,
watching as the Patuxent flows freely to the Bay.

THE TIRE SWING

[Published in the Loch Raven Review, Fall 2012]


THE TIRE SWING


The tire swing hangs straight,
rope unbent by play,
time unmarked
by a daydreamer’s lazy pendulum;
grass grown into the bare patch
where feet once scraped
and pushed off for speed.

The children are gone,
to other trailer parks,
acres of double-wides in the sun
clean, suburbanized, orderly,
and out of the way;
to cramped apartments
stacked atop one another;
or to motels along Route 1
where they play among the tires
of parked cars and diesel trucks,
feet scraping across an asphalt lot.

Among the trees and the weeds,
all that remains:
an old washer,
toys that fell from a box—
forgotten and unnoticed—
empty concrete pads
where trailers stood,
cinder blocks holding up only air.

When the tree is cut down
to make way for a four bedroom home
and a manicured lawn
with its ornamental tree,
the tire will swing again,
for just a moment,
before plunging to ground.