Early afternoon lines formed in front of the corner bodega as
construction workers, letter carriers, and business owners
came for street tacos and massive coolers of sweet tea,
soda, horchata — absolutely anything to break the heat
and haze of this late summer day.
For years this corner of the world had thrived in a massive age
of promise, industrial strength, entrepreneurship, and growth.
Immigrants found the hardest work, and they created neighborhoods,
churches, parks, and new welcome centers. All these were divided by
interstates, run down by neglect as eyes and energy moved on.
Who remained? Artists, families clinging to home, teenagers thrown away,
many who had been homeless for far long — all who found safety in the
brick factories, grain houses, lofts, and multi-storied homes.
Time moves forward, and progress returns. Bigger! Better!
newer but nothing for those who cobbled together safety
as shaky as these eroding buildings, yet a safety that was theirs.
Growing fainter, the chalk outline persisted on the sidewalk
as boots tramped over it, motorcycles zoomed over with burning rubber,
spits of iced sweet tea, soda, and horchata landing square.
“Developer buying us out,” whispered one passing by.
“He promised thousands more than he actually paid for
my great-grandmother’s home,” sneered another.
Every slur was slung and spun, heaped upon this nothing of a man.
Dirty concrete under a blistering sun: that was the place of death,
neatly marked and cordoned off that sweltering evening into darkest night
just months before. Stoned to death, but from where did the stones come?
Did slingshots send them, or did hands hold bricks and rocks firmly with each
pounding, pounding, pounding? Again, nothing remained of this big shot.
Boasting, greedy, loud, gluttonous, filthy-rich, scheming, conniving,
he was Nothing. The outline alone remained for all to visit and trample.
Far above, a gargoyle guarded all below. Quiet and solemn.
She perched high in the once gilded hotel now serving as a haunted house.
Around her were the stones of history, the bricks of family houses,
pebbles and rocks of people from these past hundred years.
Her eyes shone, and a deep laugh came from deep in her concrete being.
