About
With public transportation as a backdrop, Butterfly Praxis explores the human effects of structural violence. What does it look like to live in a red-lined community in Baltimore? To both observe and absorb? Finding inspiration in quotidian life, found language and Lawrence T. Brown’s Black Butterfly theory, the poems in Butterfly Praxis answer these questions with vivid portraits and powerful language.
BUTTERFLY PRAXIS
There isn't always a house burning when you hear sirens;
sometimes it's a checkerspot, imperiled.
Sometimes when engine 29 or 52 drives past, the EMTs
are heading to black tiger swallowtail resuscitation.
Sometimes a pedestrian is lateral recumbent on York Road.
Sometimes it's 27 monarchs whose wings collapsed in Penn North.
Sometimes it's a panic attack on Liberty Heights or a six-year old
with a gunshot wound on Queensbury.
There isn't always fire: sometimes it's a mourning cloak
who can't breathe through the mesh.
Copyright: Zahra Gordon, 2026
Zahra Gordon 