I'm working on a collection of poems, now, involved
with Chicago.
Interspersed with these poems, there
will be quotes from newspapers, and other newspapers,
and guides to the city, court trials, transcripts, history
books, and so forth.
There's a little pamphlet that was published in 1909
called Scene Chicago Guide, telling the visitor to the city
how to find his way around the city.
It was published a few years after the Chicago fire.
The first sentence in this pamphlet
is, everyone is interested in fire.
This is how to find your way around the city.
It will avail you nothing to be told a place is so
many blocks north, if you start to find it
by going east, west, or south.
Be always on the safe side and ask, which is north?
If no policeman is in sight, ask a fireman.
[LAUGHTER]
Chicago Public Library, I am downtown.
I am wearing sunglasses, a funny nose, and a big,
inch-and-a-half long false teeth.
I have them jammed on over my other teeth.
I have the look of unabashed stupidity.
[LAUGHTER]
People comment on it.
Some hoodlums jeer at me, throw rocks at me.
It is raining.
Also, it is snowing.
There are carols.
It is December, late December, nearly Christmas.
Old men and women are huddled in the corridor of the Chicago
Public Library.
I go there and huddle too.
I keep on my sunglasses and nose.
People like them.
They admire them.
Then they look at me.
They look closely and huddle against me.
They pick my pockets, my pubescent blackheads,
my father's watch chain.
One of them, a dwarf, takes me by the hand.
We go walking, just the two of us.
After a while, we begin to fly.
We fly very slowly, and low, and toward the lake, and then back.
I fall asleep.
I have bad dreams.
I awaken.
Waldheim Jewish Cemetery, the outer drive,
stainless-steel florist shops, the traffic lights--
red, amber, and green.
I enter off Montrose Avenue.
Slowly, slowly, I begin the long swim to Michigan.