They tied people
I might have loved 
to stakes placed high

on piles of gasolined wood,
bound them with ropes
they bought on my credit.

They set those pyres alight
with bills I handed them 
from my wallet

and when the condemned
screamed, they turned
my music up loud enough

to make it seem 
that the cries of the immolated
were distant,

discordant coincidences
not in the soundtrack
from the start.

I bowed my head 
and looked at my hands;
empty, supplicant,

stinking of
accelerant, blistered
and scarred from heat.

They also held my tears
and though I wept for it all,
though my weeping

should have added
salt to my wounds,
they barely stung;

when I looked up
at the ones tending the pyres,
I saw my hands there.

On Gardner Street the cobblestones
no longer hide under asphalt.  It’s an
axle-breaker road, used by some

to cut from Main South
to a faster route to downtown, 
one not as direct but with 

fewer obstacles once you get past
the hard historic rumble
of Gardner Street.

Even though driving down Main Street 
offers a straight shot it’s never been easy
to get to our shiny downtown from Main South,

even before the rebuild,
the driving out of the old tenants,
the tear down of the old church,

the ripping of old fabric in favor of something
artisanal and pure and much more 
wholesomely rough;

if they haven’t
paved a condo courtyard down there 
with vintage cobblestones yet,

they will. 

Back on Gardner Street,
right near
the new Boys and Girls Club

(located off of what they used to call
Kilby Street
until someone decided

that name
reminded too many
of who ran the corners there;

GPS still calls it Kilby Street
though all the signs
are down and trashed)

drivers not already
in the know
keep slamming into

that open pit of exposed cobblestones
and either brake hard
or break down hard.

Townies know better. They know
what’s under
every shiny new surface. They

know what will render
your shiny ride useless.
Know what it means

to be shined on. Know
what their streets 
used to hold. Know

real people live on Gardner Street
and they don’t always 
just pass through.