Midwest Triptych.

Randolph and Wabash

There is a song from a musical in his head, Oklahoma, he knows it

from the time his mother took him to the theatre. He was maybe six
or seven years old, the song dormant for some fifteen years, now
tripping forth without warning, without permission, propelled by
some strange and melancholy Will. He looks across to the park. Two
plastic bags like birds nests or lovers cling desperately to the cold
metatarsals of a tree autumn has already stripped bare.
He comes from the South, a place of blue and wheat-colored
mornings. These bony streets, these dog bite winds are new and
cruel to him. He lingers on the subway steps to scavenge what
warmth he can; barely late afternoon and the sun is already sliding
inexorably into the lake, beyond the trees. He fingers the holes in
his pockets and thinks of Oklahoma, a place he has never been but
(he imagines) is nothing like the Illinois night descending upon him.

Red Line

at Fullerton the reek of piss and fritos, a mans face like a 1920s
newsreel, a womans thighs like a sleek boulevard / at Roosevelt a
man wears a trench coat and those disconcerting sneakers with
individual toes / State & Lake: a child pouts and a clutch of plastic
butterflies perch brightly on her dark braids. she stabs me a
complicitous glance as her fat mother grimaces into an ipod /
Jackson, then Monroe. nobody wants to sit beside the homeless man
reclined across three seats, his torn white sneakers pressed
mournfully against the glass. a married woman with sweet orange
hair asks a man about the harmonica in his pocket. turns out he just
bought it.

The People Mover

He pointed up at the monorail track, long fingernail like a slash of

pink paint against the grey textile of his hands.
They call it the mover.
What does it move? I asked him. Like freight, cargo?
I looked up at the metal line cutting the sky from the city.
It moves people, he said. They call it the people mover.