From 79th Street
South Works flexed its
muscle of light,
an infinite halo
of orange and white;
like they had captured
the sun
in four steel walls . . .
And they had.
Its mighty slag
filled potholes on
Torrance Avenue clear down
to the Calumet River;
where it lay in heaps
like dirty linen.
I could hear the lapping
of black water,
and the grinding of
rivers and rails.
On hot days
I could smell the yards,
blood and meat and iron,
carried on the breeze
like new curses.
I could feel the
murderous rumble
of my dad’s Oldsmobile
weaving in and out of
night and day traffic
like a gull in the wind.
He’d tool up Western Avenue
and remind me that the
Green Hornet streetcars
once rode the longest line
in the world,
right here.
And Western would trot out
its goods: Grocerias,
and tarted-up carlots,
lit up like the Carnival
or Saint Rocco’s day,
used cars and short skirts,
hot-dog joints and the union hall;
then like now
Western looks like the girl
with too much eye shadow.
In the scrap lots,
bottle-gangs of invisible men
drank pints of Mad Dog
While burning garbage
kept them warm; they seemed to
disappear into the smoke
one orange ember
at a time.
Like human coal
the city shovels
into itself.
My dad would fuss
with the radio until
the voice of Bob Elson
filled the Olds with the
Sox lineup: Staley, Landis,
Rivera, Aparicio, Fox, Pierce,
and Lollar . . .
a couple of years past Go-Go
but game enough
for Bridgeport’s
strutting beer-bellies
and crew cuts.
The Comiskey crowd
would file in; scowl to scowl,
elbow to elbow in the shrine
the old Roman built
on the backs of underpaid
ballplayers. So cheap was Comiskey
that he’d only launder uniforms
once a week.
“Tighter than a bag of lug bolts,”
my father would say.
The White Sox would
sail on the
ancient knuckleball of
Hoyt Wilhelm,
ace fireman of his time.
He was one of those guys
who was old even when
he was young.
He’d stare down the 9th inning,
with the patience of a
carrion bird,
and we the people
would wait him out,
for the
secret.
I wanted to know
the secrets and pacts
of slaughtered cattle,
and exploding scoreboards.
Of my mother and father’s
great romance on 72nd Street
where he would get on the streetcar
and then two others
to Austin Boulevard
just to
look at her.
I wanted the city
to give up its litanies
of the living
and the dead.
The dead still walk
this city.
I dreamt once that
children burnt in a fire,
with only their arms for blankets,
sang in the frozen night
outside of a church
while angels wept down upon them.
92 children howled and screamed
like dying animals;
singing for God
to let them
back in.
The dead still talk
in this city.
My dad drove an ambulance
for Thompson funeral parlor
at 79th and Ellis
and sometimes the dead
spoke to him through
the radio,
or called him on the phone,
but when he turned
on the T.V.
they’d only
stare back
waving silently
in black and white.
The Irish dead still talk
a lot in this city.
The fog is like cigar smoke
at the foot of the lake,
and Richard J. Daley
could always see through
the smoke.
Every wink, every nod,
every smirk
turned into highways,
skyscrapers and bridges.
“I am a kid from the stockyards,
I’ll stand with you.”
And he did.
Then the Irish
licked the frosting,
ate the cake,
and sold the
plate.
Who built the pyramids?
Mayor Daley built the pyramids
The white-haired poet said,
“The people know what
the land knows.”
Not true with this city.
This city knows itself by
its noises; like those whistles
only dogs can hear.
The city hears the cries of
battered wives, the wailing of
underweight babies,
and the euphony of
children circling an opened
hydrant.
This city knows, it can hear itself;
in sirens and tow trucks,
broken bottles and the mewling
of strays.
The needing.
The wanting,
and the pleading
thrum in
every window.
Under the constellations
my dad buys me an Italian ice
with lemon peels I can taste
the sun in.
The smelt are running
off Montrose Harbor.
My dad points to the North Star
and shows me how boats
box the compass
around it.
Under the dock the smelt
are a whir of silvery light;
as indecipherable as
the tails of
comets.
Going south
Saint Therese watches us
from the dashboard.
Her beatific smile glowing,
her Carmelite shawl opens
with a shower of white roses.
And outside
white petals float
on a billowed wind
onto Stony Island Avenue.
We watch,
nearer to God’s heart;
we forgo all other
ecstasies,
all other evidence,
and all other prayers.
