You call this place
“gritty” or “post-industrial.”  

You call this place
“second rate.”

We call it “leverage.”  

As in,
“Growing up here 
gives you permanent
leverage
against pretense.”

We learn to make our faces
movie star grim just to leave the house,
just to keep you off balance,
just to hide our laughter,

and as a reward from the gods
whenever we proudly say the hometown name
a seagull in Boston fires from the sky
and ruins a Saab windshield,
a raw wool sweater in Northampton
catches on an antique nailhead,
and somewhere on the Cape
an overpriced lobster bites back.

Worcester, Springfield,
Lowell, Lawrence,
Holyoke, Pittsfield:  
feeling ya, babes.  
Feeling
the long seasons of drought
coming up wet for once.  
Feeling how long it’s been
since we started leaving home 
for the pretty places,

forgetting how good home feels,
and how handsome we are.

When we see how much makeup
they wear elsewhere,
it’s enough to make us empty a mill
and start a revolution inside.