Below, three of Philip Metres‘ 13 Ways of Looking at Cleveland. Read the rest here. 

2. The scuffed, the soiled, the scarred.  The scalded arm of the short order cook now wrapped in a white cast, who watches his girlfriend shake her pitching arm in the sixth inning of work for the Carroll Blue Streaks, in University Heights.  She’s tiring.  He’d give his arm for her if he could.

3. The magnolia blooming on Magnolia Drive, and the hordes of wedding parties in black and burgundy tuxes, and ivory and saffron and powder-blue chiffon dresses, all assembling in rows for wedding album photos around Wade Park Lagoon.  They play starring roles in a film about love, and the need to voice it publicly.  Matinees are free, all Saturdays from April to October.

8. One dark night, the twilight of yellow streetlamps echoed by the snow piled on sidewalks and slathering the street, and late for the Cavs game, I barreled through Ohio City, looking for an unfamiliar house, when I saw something glinting in the distance, in the middle of the street.  Swinging his body down the center of the snowy street, a man on aluminum crutches.