The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century

The Chills by Michael O’Leary

The street quite still.
Down the long corridor

a light, several doors
and a single pine.

Conversation on
the wires are quiet,

sequestered from here
to there, ear to ear.

The most intimate
jokes get lost sometimes,

even simple questions
go unanswered.

Quiet's like that.
Magnificent crystals

of ice spider
across the creaking panes.

*

Song Without Words by Ela Kotkowska

     The poem rehearses its lines even as I wake
     —Robert Duncan

You always store pebbles under your tongue. There is no difference between root and cheek. Sublime collector without an archive, please forget the taste of milkweed and my face in the morning.

In the dream, we dance off tempo. The chorus of gulls spits abject syllables and we pick up pearls.

You have anaesthetized numbers and defied heavenly calculus. Divine excrements forge new generations. Arctic lamp nourished by gale, don’t judge the bone by the weight of flesh.

We spin sand into thunder. Birds of prey alight on its branches.

You teach contempt to those who have ears and cruel caress to those who have skin. Before you, blind alleys grope for the threshold. Alpha and Charybdis, release the words trapped in mass graves.

The dream takes place entirely under water. I stitch the shores with your best yarn like a doublet.

Your hands turn letters into islands and books into lost ships. Fresh prophets augur old wars from gutted starfish. Babel of laughter, disperse my fears over the hundred and ten stories.

We fashion new rituals with our fingers. Trammellers catch in this mesh bowfin and perch.

You skim sleep from the dream and peel the skin from the mirror. Your frown is worth the empire. Boundless well, give me back the salt of my tears.

Now the dance is played in slow motion. We thieve in the interval.

Your surge meets the fall and your whirl foretells winter. Those who lend their garments to the wind enter the secret. Garden of lights, let not their last word be a scream.

We trade places on the fish market. The scales have been calibrated for the minimum of air.

You stamped your face against the sky and carved your thoughts into the ground. Pool of misery, please forget the smell of hyssop and the shape of my belly.

*

The Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Chicago Haiku by Luis Urrea

Jackson & Harlem

I will fuck you up.
Come back here motherfucker.
You ‘bout to get served.

#

Ogden & Western

Oil change and filter—
$39 Special!
Coffee and donuts.

#

Sun-Times

Killed wife, girl, in-laws—
Several hard hammer blows—
Insulted manhood.

#

WLS

I’m the decider.
Conservative Compassion.
I’m the uniter.

#

Grant Park

Pigeon on the ice
Picking at yellow vomit
Of homeless soldier.

#

South Loop

Do I transfer here
To catch the Orange Line?
I’ll get fired for sure.

#

Austin & Roosevelt

Paletas frescas!
Tacos, tortas, menudo!
Go back home, beaner!

#

Biograph

Lady in Red’s ghost
Can’t escape alley’s mouth:
Johnny Dillinger.

#

South Racine

Why you stone trippin’
Babygirl I aint pimpin’—
Got your back for reals.

#

Airport

Security check:
Remove your shoes and jackets.
Welcome to O’Hare.

#

Millennium Park

Do you know Jesus?
If you were to die tonight
Would you go to Heaven?

#

Proviso East High School

Hallways full of ghosts
From Chicago to Detroit—
No Child Left Behind.