Super Tuesday

The day hits me as if daylight had ridden into town
On a greyhound bus from Jersey.

I squint through window to see a smirking sneer cross
The long face of winter, laughing at the “greater Chicagoland area”

Or maybe it was a sneering smirk.
I don’t know.

Let’s split the difference.
(it’s that kind of day)

The alarm clock sounds like a collect call from prison

February has left the streets full of slush and sleep
Beneath the sad rhetoric of lonely stop signs.

In the dying wig district on division street,
I remember seeing an old brick building with a highline of graffiti
Showing where a house once stood next door-

It was under a newsprint sky exactly like this one
When the house receded back into the sea of broken glass
From whence it came.

Watermarks and floods remind me of Iowa, where it’s always February.
Or July. And where all of my ex-girlfriend’s parents grew up. Really.

I hate the phrase ‘Chicagoland’ but something about the term,
So ready to sell out the speaker as a phony,
Seems like the kind of word I should use today.

In the paper I read an advertisement for ‘pre-need cremation services’
And again it makes me think of New Jersey.

Some days I’m glad to live in Chicagoland.

Today, for instance, when I skipped poetry class
To write this poem.