Three Poems

Four Rivers and the Pennsy Yards

Laid out on cowpaths
                                 muck then mustard brick
Pittsburgh, East Pittsburgh, the South Hills coil and trail
sinewy. By the 'forties stick by stick
plank stairs and sawtooth roofs still clambered up shale

framing the incline, barges, staggered bridges
on Ohio, Monongahela, Allegheny.
Rawtooth, fresh soot each morning on their edges.
Bessemers lioned in my sleep, orange, runny.

I came back at sixteen, a scout for Yale
sizing me up. And stayed one more whole day,
father insisting I choose my own hotel,
have breakfast over the newspaper, play

at being my own man in the city. Towards
...