from my unpublished second collection
1.
Huge plumes of smoke. Streetlights bundled in ice and snow. Spit frozen on Plexiglas. The L pulls in to Berwyn Station, rattling the Dumpsters wrapped in chains in the alley behind the Blue Sea diner. The Precinct Captain’s rigged his squad car to play “Bad Boys” when he hits the horn, a trophy from the time he brought a bad guy down on Cops. He’s tired of blasting it at low-lives, and tired of waiting for this jerk-off to show up with his money. The L is tired, too. It closes its doors and rolls into gear like an broken-down animal poked by a stick; and a hundred thousand windows watch it make its rounds, with their blank faces, and their dim light turned inward. Not one of them sees past Chicago.
2.
The wind doesn’t rule Chicago; the wind is Chicago, and Chicago charges out of the lake and impales a plastic grocery bag on the high branches of an old Chicago oak, so that through the summer it’ll hang there among all that green and will emerge next fall intact and defiant. Chicago looks over at Chicago, and Chicago shrugs its broad shoulders as if to say ya gotta love it, proud as a farm boy to be tough enough to find Chicago beautiful; and Chicago, with her jeans painted on and her thick lipstick and mascara, is tough enough to know which guys mean it when they say it, and which guys don’t have what it takes.
3.
Rows of empty storefronts, strip malls anchored by Dollar Daze and an automotive store. The Bosnian-Polish-Swedish-Irish-Middle-Eastern mini-mart. Tow trucks hustling tows while the first snowflakes land and stick, the tow trucks fast as hummingbirds, not waiting for no two-inch snow rule to clear away the cars parked on snow routes no one plows. All of us wanting a piece of it. All of us made for better but wanting more instead. The Precinct Captain hits the horn and shouts his favorite motto: All criminals are innocent until proven guilty ¾ and guess who the L spits out just then?
First published in Witness
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