michael ceraolo

from Euclid Creek

Today the swamps have been drained,
                                                                         but
poverty is fetid and makes the area unhealthy
On Hawthorne Avenue
the trash-strewn and weed-overrun vacant lots,
the chips of lead paint peeling
from the houses still standing,
the wooden windows and forsaken factories,
the unknown industrial effluvia
buried deep (and not-so-deep) in the ground
are all aspects of the scarlet letter
that whole neighborhoods are condemned to wear
for what society sees as the sin of poverty --

Michael Ceraolo