by Ivars Balkits  

The urban trail begins on the concrete ramp that rises from the basement-level back-building courtyard (also made entirely of concrete) up to the street. Go up the ramp partly, then step up to the low cinderblock and cement wall on your left and follow that back in the other direction. Balance on this wall between back-building courtyards until you get to the wire fence not twenty paces away. Climb using one knee on the brick wall where the fence ends as well as using the footholds in the wire fence. These footholds are for sneakered feet.

You are now in the more elegant street-level front-of-the-street courtyard of the complex behind where you started out. These old-fashioned six-story-tall complexes are familiar to anyone who has lived in the city long. You have not lived long but know your way around. Walk around (or through) the landscaped sections of this fancy complex out to Broadway—but not the Broadway most people associate with that name; this is North Broadway. Cross directly “in between” and not “at the green,” ignoring what you were taught in elementary school, and enter through the opening between the mica flecked granite walls that define the park.

There’s the hill the kids sled in winter. You’ve done that. You did it on a car hood with five friends once and crashed into the trees. For fun, you can climb up to the roof of the small blocky mud room of the park building; no one knows for sure what it’s for. (It’s too complex for a kid to relate how to make that climb. Do your best.) Jump back down and run pointlessly along the asphalt road that connects the two entries to the park on the Broadway side. Halfway, dart up through the woods to the big cave and hide there from the Spartans, a neighborhood gang that likely has no interest in you.

From there, walk the dirt trail to the other asphalt road that goes up past the playground with its monkey bars, shower-fountain for summer fun, and knock-hockey tables, a game at which you excel. Climb the gray elephant rocks by the side of that road and secretly observe the strollers and bicyclists that pass. Climb up farther to The Cloisters and use the bathrooms there. Stick around a while and wonder about the Unicorn Tapestries but do try to make it home in time for supper.

Ivars Balkits has been a dual citizen of Latvia and the USA since 2016 and lives in a small mountain village in Crete, Greece. His poems and prose have been most recently published by Poetose, The Palisades Review, ephemeras, Vernacular Journal, Meetinghouse Magazine, Mercurius Magazine, Pnyx (Ozymandias Project), Otoliths, and Punt Volat.

SLAG GLASS CITY · Volume 12 · May 2026
Header image by Eden, Janine and Jim

About Brittany Kass