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
