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Annunciation
For my sins I live in the city of Baltimore
Immutable as it staggers into the sea its crooked shore
Uncertain of any harbor, impure and beautiful
Like a cigarette butt in last night’s drink.
So must I also think like Poe with an aching head
Of dark and transcendent things that drift from those alleys
Follow us back to our little blue home. Let these poems
Be our fiery word in these haunted streets, turning all shades
But our own to things as real as stone where we can read
Our death has not been written yet. Even with monsters
At the edges, it is a map where we can live, this city they
Keep building as it falls, the water’s current carries everything
Away but what we feel, who we loved, where we went that
Night for crabs and beer. It will never be more real than here.
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David Beaudouin, native to Baltimore, is a widely published poet and performer. He was the founder of Tropos Press, Inc. (1976–2001), one of the region’s earliest and most respected alternative literary presses, as well as The Pearl (1980–2001), a Baltimore journal of the literary and “spontaneous” arts. He served for more than a decade as a literary panelist for the Mayor’s Committee on Arts and Culture and was instrumental in the creation of the Artscape Literary Arts Award, and additionally has created and hosted a number of public reading series in the area, most recently “Blabbermouth.” David also has collaborated with visual artists Thea Osato and Julia Kim Smith on multimedia projects, and has co-produced two documentary shorts, Fluid Movement and One Nice Thing. Published works include Ten Poems (1973), Gig (1976), Catenae (1989), Ode to Stella (1990), American Night (1992), and Human Nature (1995). Two new collections, After All (Bowerbox Press) and Some Odes and Others (UnCollected Press) will be published in 2024. [Author photo by Steve Parke.]
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Mural art by Stefan Ways and Baltimore-based artist and activist Nether
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Author: Terence Winch
