Letters to the Editor

A Poem for Downtown Wheeling

1 min read

Editor, News-Register:

The hills and cliffs still bear the scars

of where the Ohio once slashed at them.

It is at the site of this attempted murder

that the city rests, still asleep in its work clothes

the crumbs of weathered roads and broken curbs

littering its chest.

Faded brick alleyways seep between buildings like old capillaries

The Capitol Theatre wears the evening like a tux

Old leather volumes ferment silently in a bookstore

In bars, the carousing liturgy of stories being told

some legend, some folklore.

From the restaurant on the corner of Market and 12th,

the scent of hot chicken and succotash rises.

Stefon Napier

Wheeling

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