Hood Aesthetic

Naturally, broken glass, throbbing bass, a roll of bills and a paper bag passed between the hands of hustlers. Just as true: the rows of corn planted by the family at the end of the street. Even in this leaded soil, stalks grow fat cobs. The squeal and clatter of barefoot children chasing each other on asphalt, tight braids flying, shoes abandoned at the back door, rounds of Happy Birthday to ya! from an open apartment window, the shuffle of sneaker and swish of net from the basketball players beneath. In the morning, I step outside to starlings, wings like oil slicks, construction and the smell of hot tar releasing a wavering haze of heat. I wave to a neighbor sitting on the stoop, shirtless, smiling. What neither of us knows is that he will be dead a year from now. His body will lie at the front steps of our building. His dreadlocks will splay across concrete. Another makeshift altar erected at the lamppost on the corner: candles, silk flowers, laminated pictures, empty liquor bottles. But for today, Al Green’s falsetto wafts across the street, as the blue faces of cornflowers overwhelm the empty lot where a building once burned, as August clutches us to her chest, leaving us slick with possibility.