Chicago triptych
In the Midwest, on a bus, a man takes large pulls from a bottle of whole milk. An erratic dinging sound: someone bumping up against the REQUEST STOP button. I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees, she’s saying, What is that supposed to mean?
2
The afternoon is wide and blue and fringed with prairie flowers. Everywhere go blackbirds shouldered with red. I can whistle the first two sounds but not the third. Tweet, tweet, [???]. Con-ka-lee. Poo-tee-weet. Who-who-weee. Another blackbird alights on some rosinweed and regards the improbable Lake, the City so immensely assembled beside it. The day is all distance, its white sails like feathers, blades, shapes cut from paper. An ice cream vendor tinkles and clangs his cart across the horizon. Reggaeton drifts over from a nearby hammock. They’ve got these Dont Swim signs but they’ve got a perfect ladder! cries an older man, who frontflips into the water with a smack. Who, who, we. Hard as I try, I can never quite whistle the third.
3
He holds up his guitar, wordlessly counting time between strums. The sound of cicadas in the trees, the summer holding its breath. My head spins in this caesura. And then—a thunderstorm of static—crashes down through our bodies—
IT ISNT SOMETHIN YOU CAN CHOOSE / BE / TWEEN
IT ISNT COMIN IN TWOS / AND / THREES
ALWAYS LOOKIN FOR THAT ONE / SURE / THING
OH YOU WANT IT SO DES / PERATE / LY
ben tapeworm