Poetry by JC Snyder

Sitting in pouring rain
Cars like mine wait for their turn in the
Fort McHenry tunnel

We are worn out in our cells—
Outside the city
Wistfully waits for us
To find a speck of beauty in
That otherwise dreary face.

Around me smoke stacks make their way
Through low weeping clouds
And piles of salt and coal and dirt
Seem like shadowy mountains
And the train tracks are run with weeds
The buildings are rusted
Their windows cracked like the dim twinkle
In the eyes of a man
Who works hard for his family.

We are stubborn, strong,
And the steel is in our veins.

1-800-Jesus
on a bus billboard
silently tells my old man,
outside the Burger King,
that the halfway house can
snap a heroin needle in half.

But my old man
was too busy
picking dirt from his nails
drinking from a bag
chewing his bottom lip.

My old man was
in a dirty argyle sweater,
just another on a bench
that sizzled in the heat
like a dying
cigarette,
like singed fingertips
black with ash.