No one smiled in Chicago on Black Friday after the video was released

No One Smiles in Chicago on Black Friday After the Video is Released


Not on solitary runners pounding Lakeshore Drive
Not in the iced, glib and flowered patisseries
Not at the universities busied in status and cures
Not when sun strikes Trump Towers’ wide face

Something in Chicago is amiss: No one wears a smile
Today, Black Friday, not one stretched or pursed
Across face-masked police, proud and shamed
Not on the Westin’s bel hops, The Palmer’s Concierge

Not glossed and hanging at the Museum of Contemporary Art
Not on Chicago’s pigeons spinning on tin spires
Not at Lululemon’s or anywhere inside Neiman Marcus
Not at the stone Drake, its valets passing winces to the street

Not at Prada, or the vast interior of the Board of Trade
Not outside, where rare birds stock the trees one at a time
Not north through Old Town past what we shall admire in the past
Not in Second City, lips sewn shut since last night’s slipshod laughs

Not one smile flashed smug by those lugging bags
Slick and blazoned bags fit for housing refugees
From the better venues of that Magnificence Mile
Where linked arms boldly coerce shoppers to halt

Chanting “Shut it down! 16 Shots!” into that great street
Scuffling with a Chinese tourist bound for Louis Vuitton
In the city of broad arrogance, where secrecy steams through grills
In alluring alleyways bearing tricks and highs for six bucks

Laquan hallucinating down center divider for kicks
Ward of the State, breaking and entering, stabbing
The squad car tire with a pocketknife, rash and poor
Aiming crooked before bending awkward at the hips

Dropping back and sideways to the asphalt, puffs exiting Laquan
In Chicago, where the wind turns corners, ripping marble fascia
And dashing it without apology to the street. Where it blows cups
Into the River. Cups from Starbucks, from lobbies, from beggars

Cups of the rich into the River Chicago, where no children play
Died green river of no banks, no frogs, no rushes, no bends
River Shikaakwa of the Potawatomi, Miami, Sauk and Fox
Bathing careless in the river near their sharpened points, faces

Changing contorted as Jean Baptiste Point du Sable rides up
To be the first settler, a black man, possibly on a Friday
On horseback carrying in his hands a stake, and on his face
An expression they would tell stories about for years to come

How his face looked, in Chicago

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