Rowhouse in an Empty Town~ By Angel Propps

Orphaned and drifting along
On a derelict street, eaves drooping
Gutters filled with birdshit
It’s stark cry long since muted
By the screaming of the blighted
The torn down and abandoned
Once children sat on the stoops
Bookended homes leaning against
One another, all support now gone
Tossed away. Urban decay, is that really
All they can think of to describe this horror?
This is a monument, a wailing wall
Of rotted and shattered plaster
Overgrown lawns and a foundling
Foundering along unkempt--
A dowager in a mildewed dress
A lone and boarded over elder
Who’s outlived its time in a
City that no longer loves its own history
And yet cannot move past it
Coal is still king! They cry even as
This home that is no longer part of any row
Sags to the broken sidewalk,
To the beer bottle littered grass
And dies.


Author Bio:
Angel Propps is a freelance writer, author and LGBTQ activist who spent her teenage and many adult years in a town shattered by mill closings and urban decay. A condition that seems to have become utterly contagious.