People Who Draw Comics Shouldn't Run Down Cleveland

Cleveland--my city where worried wearied feet
in steel-toed boots walk the same uneven sidewalks
as the white coats, sons of bricklayers who forget

their fathers, their callused hands, lost in textbooks
and sterile steel, forgetting who pours the steel, who
laid the tracks, who built the cemetary where they

jog twice a week, rain or shine. My city of the student,
the struggling artist, bitter comics about the VA hospital,
the city that fosters Superman and supermen, home to

my lady of asymmetry. The doctors live in post-industrial
buildings with views of the lake and buy the art from the
people who live above their shops, who can't afford insurance.

Cleveland, my city of the future, lying like an ex-boyfriend
next year, the Browns, three years, Euclid, ten years, who knows
I always believe your voices; I'll always believe in you

because when the apocalypse comes, Cleveland, I want to
brace myself in your doorways, listen for the shear of steel and
falling brick, wait for the sirens to start.