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.