DUNDALK

Wayne came back late from lunch, put his head down on his desk and slept. I was finishing up a lesson on supply-side economics. Noon slumped through the half-shut blinds and the classroom was hot. I knew he was high. I clicked the next slide. Security pulled us both into the hall and the school cop asked me a few leading questions, then kicked him out for good. Said it was his last strike. That he punched his own ticket. Next day, it’s like nothing happened: the teens of south Baltimore turn to the clock, the scuffed tile floor. Snap gum in their teeth. I go back to deadweight loss and human capital and returns on investment. I go back to my rented rowhome on the northside where I live with a guy who ships in airtight bricks from Washington State, breaks them into eighths and makes a killing off Hopkins kids. No worries right because I smoke for free and he’s never gotten caught and it’s not luck, not really. He says stuff like money makes money and cops here have bigger fish. Some days, driving home, I’ll go south, get halfway out on the Key Bridge and pull off. From here, you can see the grain pier, the waste plant’s gold honeycomb towers, the dock cranes leaning out over the harbor like drunks. You could stay, if you wanted, for an hour, or two, as long as you can stand it, watching the container ships drift in and churn out, the longshoreman offloading, relaying, shuffling the stacks. Long enough and you could watch what’s left of the work day drain off into the Chesapeake. Watch night spread out like an oil slick and go still.

Edgar Kunz is the author of the poetry collection Tap Out (Mariner/HMH), a New York Times New & Noteworthy book. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College. His second book, Fixer, is forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins.

“Dundalk” was originally published in Bat City Review Issue 10.