This is a poem I’ve been working on for a couple of months. It names a number of Asheville, N.C.-based landmarks, characters, and artists, but my hope is there’s something of the universal. So many of us are witnessing the loss of our communities to the juggernaut of development and wealth, neither of which ever do much to forward the arts or the creative culture.

THE GHOST OF GAVRA LYNN

The man took the temperature

of this neighborhood and decided

in his boardroom that, yes, it’s time

to capitalize on what the artists

built. The ambiance of ingenuity mined

from the rubble. Construct a hotel

to tower over the coffee shops and dive

bars, over the thrift stores and book stores, over

the murals, over the graffiti tags, over the sharpie

love notes scrawled hurriedly

in bathroom stalls. The man wants to drink

the blood of the cash cow like milk

money. This is how capitalism feeds

itself. For that unquenchable thirst

I invoke the gutters of Water Street, which was

the name of this street before this town

was a tourist destination and just after the road

was cut through an indigenous graveyard,

the bones of the ancestors mingled

with foundation stones, the ghosts left to wander

with the working girls and the stable boys. Gutters

running with wash water and corn liquor

and animal waste and the heaving rains

of late summer, all running downhill

toward the river. I invoke the barred doors

of speakeasies where life went on in smoke

and jazz, out of earshot of Prohibitionists. I invoke

the rooftop that broadcast Appalachian country

music to the cities beyond the Blue

Ridge, and the road toward Beaucatcher Mountain

that might as well have marked the end of the world

because the bowl of the valley was its own nourishment

and its own famine. I invoke the courtyard

of Vincent’s Ear where everyone was sitting

while Jack White played inside because really

was he even that good? And wasn’t it better

to be together under a blanket of stars? I invoke

the ghost of Gavra Lynn, may she be not dead

but also may she not know how the places

she graced with her guitar and her warble

have been desecrated by the khaki-wearing

masses, by the herds of bros and bridesmaids

who could not hear her songs over their shrill,

stale merriment. May the khaki masses

receive the vision of heart to know the music

of this street. Its metallic buzz, its raw

yowl, its electric melee. And if they can’t hear it,

may they move on toward Charlotte

or Atlanta, some place large enough

to swallow them because it’s eat

or be eaten: The man who builds monuments

would say as much. I invoke the ghosts

of Cowboy and of Ramshead, misfits

sometimes troubled by this place but still

walking its broken pavements to find some sense

of self. I invoke the ghost of Perri Crutcher

gardening the alley where a building once

stood and where, in its absence, he made flourish

a strange Eden. I invoke the ghost of Eric

Legge whose studio was once

where Lazy Diamond is now, and where,

at some future date, Lazy Diamond will no longer

stand, but the breath and pulse of Eric Legge’s paintings

will go on and so, too, will the breath and pulse

of Lazy Diamond and all the tattoo shops

and record stores because sound

is a boomerang. Did the man who came to construct

another statue think of this? That he can lay

brick and mortar over bones and dreams

but what remains is an energetic stamp, a soul

relentless in its vinelike climbing, its insistent

song. The man will build his boutique hotel

on a curse that is also a promise. A banishment

that is also a love spell. An evil eye

that protects its wearer and turns all others

away. Paint your transoms and your sashes Plateye

blue, man, because the haint that haunts

this neighborhood is a living ghost. A story

in motion, in the act of telling itself, a story

that wants to go on adding characters

and voices and the passing of time. It’s

not a commodity to be bought and sold, not

a resource to be exploited. It’s a thoroughfare

and a handful of cross-streets hemming

in a history that wends and snags

and spools itself outward and more

outward. A mending, a seam, a flannel patch

over worn denim, a knot that holds

like a choke sometimes and,

other times, an embrace.