A view of people in Ybor City standing near the ruins of a building damaged by a fire. Credit: Dunn, Hampton, "Ybor City Fire" (1900). Hampton Dunn Collection of Florida Postcards. Image 2676.

On the Corner of 14th St. and 19th Ave.,

on a cool, late-February evening,

she stands.

Tall. Majestic. Full of life.

The heart of a city that moves to her beat.

She is the buzz in the streets.

She is the buzz in the hundreds of homes

that depend on her even to eat.

Yes, she is the buzz in these streets.

She is the pillar the whole town was built on.

The Cuban, the Spanish, and Italian immigrants,

all of them move to her beat.

Life blooms from the buzz that she stirs.

Her and the two hundred others like her.

They are the arteries maintaining harmony.

If any one of them left, it would hurt.

And it did…

No one could’ve imagined it.

Nobody could’ve warned her,

that this cool, February night

would be her last night

on this corner.

On the northeast corner of 15th St. and 9th Ave.,

he sits.

Proud. Humble. Tired from a long week’s work.

The buzz from the other factory workers all around him

as he orders another Florida Ale.

It’s Saturday night,

and payday is play-day.

All of this goes without fail.

A couple cervecitas, a game of Bolitas,

in a place where no boredom prevails.

So he catches a buzz,

not a care in the world,

and prepares to go home to his girl.

Not knowing the impending doom up ahead.

Tomorrow, he’d wake in a whirl.

III

It was on the corner of 20th St. and 12th Ave.

that the flames were first spotted.

Those ferocious flames that seemingly swooped in

as if in a fit

over the profit the town had been making,

and all of the buzz it had gotten.

March 1st, 1908,

a date that cannot be forgotten.

More than thirteen blocks scorched.

Forty-two businesses lost.

Two thousand, plus, without homes.

Just as many without jobs.

How would the city survive?

How could it once again thrive?

Its people.

Its people knew that the phoenix’s story

was not a story of demise.

So they organized. Rebuilt. Fought fears.

A city baptized in their sweat.

A people strengthened by their tears.

Ybor city…

Just one of the stories

drained into our gulf throughout the years.

Pedro el Poeta Jarquin is an award-winning hip-hop, spoken word, and freestyle artist, an activist, a proud father of two, a teacher, and an Eckerd College gradu- ate with a B.A. in Creative writing. Born during the civil war in Nicaragua, Jarquin immigrated to the U.S., becoming a politi- cal refugee at the age of six, and grew up in the Washington D.C. area. Jarquin has been performing from an early age, and since moving to St. Petersburg, has been a vital figure on the Tampa Bay spoken word scene.