Atlanta

*
The hickory-smoke-night hangs in a haze thick with
grilling pork from the outdoor barbeque ovens.

The whole city is raw and smothered in a sweet and sour
sauce, humid and gritty as bubbling fat spews a burnt air.

Black and Brown workers, chefs, workmen in their sweats
sit by the diner kitchen or step from their cars in oversized rebellious

jeans or tees and everyone is seized by the atmosphere of
roadhouse energy, violent as the back-firing engine of a dark-

windowed sports car speeding the highway, everywhere
the tinge of violence. It’s easy & sluggish, casual & thuggish, white-cowboy,

young-Turk-gig-workers—young, young, young. Retro diners in the funk
of junked Americana: Casper the Ghost, Tarzan, Coke-branded shirts,

fifties’ malt-shop counters with slick linoleum and menus of waffles and chicken,
bowls of butter-pooled grits, flaky biscuits and fried meat, vegans in bright orange

shoes, tattoos on their arms, or heavy-set neo gay Bubbas, denim jackets, walking
with a gym-bound swish, one iron hoop through their lower lip, muscular arms,

walking and smiling with a swagger off to their gentrified home and antique
furniture. All the way to Cabbage Town, where road-rage and tension

meet gourmet Thai, everyone else just getting by, side by side
and divided by broad weather-beaten freeway highways leading to

wide-blithe suburbs of magnificent segregation—not uniformly
elite but hidden nonetheless behind the privacy of the privileged—

security systems and central air-conditioning set on high—
white-pine floors with faux Persian rugs and terracotta kitchens

and walls with neon-lit signs spelling out in red “Atlanta,” counters
with old flour tins, newly-cut vases of Calla Lilies, white and pure and fragrant.

*
This is the home of steamy lights and endless traffic, racing throngs, high-speed mayhem
and Sirius xm southern rock, gruff soul, R&B, rap and a gumbo stew of music, thick

thick and oozing everywhere. Bowls of quinoa and pineapple salad next to oily fried green
tomatoes—no restraint, maple syrup drizzled on fries, chicken tenders, cornbread—

city of Deadheads and filmmakers and atheists, Baptists and pulpits and Civil Rights
protest & excerpted sermons of MLK Jr. and lists of Freedom Fighters murdered.

*
All the way to Grant Park where we stay: new grill and salt-water pool, plant beds
of curated flowers, tree branches draped in LED lights, retirees in manicured yards—

wisteria arbors and spring-fresh magnolias–green hedges & Democratic election signs—
the perfect polish of floors and spa food served with rum-laced mojitos. Atlanta,

far from the fiery march of General Sherman leaving behind: the hypocrisy of
Reconstruction—the flames of constant argument, discrimination,

pain and a perverse identity, wild independence persist——urban city still glowing
in flames from grills as its citizens, all victims of an unclear cause, campaigning

with their sweat-stained clothing, or pastel threads adorned in jewelry, or working-class gruff
laissez-faire and I-don’t-care fashion. The dark-lined streets with bungalows

and huge oak trees towering overhead—one house a site of repeated crime and another one, a
throwback to a hip genteel time, its four-postered Restoration-Hardware beds—

town of abundant potholes and the small fragrant flowers and pink-lined smoggy mornings
behind high-rises of the New-New-South—ugly sprawls of power and

on its edges and underground broken lots, cranes and scaffolds, condos and the dives where
everyone else hangs out—headphones, earphones, smelling of incense & skin-

lotion—coconut, frying bacon and those still picking up the pieces of a wrecked South—
a messed-up, hodge-podge, vehement, smoldering, a hybrid in search of self.