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4 How the road leans To where I’m from —Michael Beyer, “Approaching New York” Approaching Baltimore Magic City, Magic City, ya’ll Got that Magic City, Magic City, ya’ll . . . the imploded high-rise, empty houses rows of busted teeth in a crooked smile. Trash-filled corner lots. Ghetto Chinese, yat gaw mein with ketchup, with or without egg. Six wings and fries. Black-clad homeboys swimming down the block, calling “loose ones, loose ones” (Magic City, Magic City, ya’ll) as they pull up sagging baggies, bop away: No easy way into this ugly beauty, once elegant lady in a tattered dress (Magic City, Magic City, ya’ll). No sweeping vistas from any approach—The highway curves and there: a tangle of overpasses, bombed out streets behind a scrim of abandoned steel mills and auto plants, unused loading docks. (Magic!) Learn to live with, love, imperfection, the close enough to right, whatever will make do (Magic City, Magic City, ya’ll). Handsome men with knife scars across the face, exhausted women dragging three tattered children down the street. What happens to a dream 5 transferred, outsourced, shuttered, boarded up? Which ways take you in, and which way out? And what grows there? Magic City, Magic City, ya’ll Got that Magic City, Magic City, ya’ll ...

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