Poem-A-Day: Pittsburgh by James Allen Hall

Pittsburgh by James Allen Hall I burn your Highland Park. I acid your Carnegie car dealerships. Your Squirrel Hill, sheer terror  in winter. But most of all, I hate your Liberty Avenue, the last place, one night, I saw my closest friend  saying, Wait here, outside the after-hours club. I wait, hating your Strip, half your Shadyside, all of Bloomfield,  the bluffs and flats where my friend trades himself.  I wait hours, then trace your Mexican War  Streets looking for his car, so I could declare a truce  in the battle he was fighting against himself. Your Hot  Metal, your Fort Pitt Bridge that leads headfirst  into the Monongahela. In the morning, he's home.  He cannot tell me where it hurts. I help him shower  off the Duquesne residue, the priesting old world  shame. Pittsburgh, you're all grit and gristle turning crystal track marks, turning a man meth mouth. I feed him, put him to bed. I'll keep watch tonight in a cable car  ascending Mt. Washington, your smokestacks  blowing clouds over the confluence until all you are,  Pittsburgh, is a sleepless shimmer I will watch  diminish down to the savaged seed of morning,  as impossible to watch as you are to name.          Copyright © 2013 by James Allen Hall. Used with permission of the author.     About This Poem "In Pittsburgh, there are 450 ways to escape, the old joke goes, built on the fact of its many bridges. I once lived there with a friend as he struggled to get sober. He's going to kill himself, I thought, and he is going to make me watch."    --James Allen Hall Most Recent Book by Hall Now You're the Enemy (University of Arkansas Press, 2008)   June 19, 2013 James Allen Hall is the author of Now You're the Enemy (University of Arkansas Press, 2008), which won awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Texas Institute, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Hall teaches at Washington College in Maryland. Related Poems This City by Liam Rector Economy by Sandra Beasley Wall Street at Night by Lola Ridge Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on  weekdays and classic poems  on weekends. Browse the  Poem-A-Day Archive.     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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