Chicago L

The screech of L tracks at 4:00,

Dull ache of afternoon’s tooth

Pierced by a drill.

Through the car’s smeary windows

Houses, neighborhoods,

Littered playgrounds tumble furiously backward.

Dwarfish trees sprout from curbside cracks,

Dropping thin leaves into unreflecting pools of water.

Backyards split by broken bricks

Offer pigeon skulls and rusted nails.

Behind fences of black iron,

Cemeteries retreat in shadow,

Their gravestones among the missing.

Red and yellow signs of camera stores and pawn shops

Litter every corner where neighborhoods begin

And instantly end.

 

A last glance at tarred rooftops,

Laundry dangling from porch railings,

Jazzy pantomimes on basketball courts

Where boys’ shouts rise unheard in the roaring air,

And then the dizzy plunge downward into a darkness mad with friction,

The undirected power of the air above

Siphoned through a concrete burrow.

The black blast of sound

Conjures a human wind

Blowing raw from every chest,

And each blinded set of eyes blinks,

Amazed to recognize

What's invisible.

 

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