TAVERN. TAVERN. CHURCH. SHUTTERED TAVERN,

then Goldblatt’s, with its finger-smeared display windows full

of stifled plaid pinafore and hard-tailored serge, each unattainable

thread cooing the delayed lusciousness of layaway, another church

then, of course, Jesus pitchin’ a blustery bitch on every other block,

then the butcher shop with, hard to believe, the blanched, archaic head

of a hog propped upright to lure waffling patrons into the steamy

innards of yet another storefront, where they drag their feet through

sawdust and revel in the come-hither bouquet of blood, then a vacant

lot, then another vacant lot, right up against a shoe store specializing

in unyielding leather, All-Stars and glittered stacked heels designed

for the Christian woman daring the jukebox, then the what-not joint,

with vanilla-iced long johns, wax lips crammed with sugar water,

notebook paper, swollen sour pickles buoyant in a splintered barrel,

school supplies, Pixie sticks, licorice whips, and vaguely warped 45s

by Fontella Bass or Johnny Taylor, now oooh, what’s that blue pepper

piercing the air with the nouns of backwood and cheap Delta cuts—

neck and gizzard, skin and claw—it’s the chicken shack, wobbling

on a foundation of board, grease riding relentless on three of its walls,

the slick cuisine served up in virgin white cardboard boxes with Tabasco

nibbling the seams, scorched wings under soaked slices of Wonder,

blind perch fried limp, spiced like it’s a mistake Mississippi don’ made,

and speaking of, July moans around a perfect perfumed tangle of eight

Baptist gals on the corner of Kedzie and Warren, fanning themselves

with their own impending funerals, fluid-filled ankles like tree trunks

sprouting from narrow slingbacks, choking in Sears’s best cinnamon-

tinged hose, their legs so unlike their arms and faces, on the other side

of the street is everything they are trying to be beyond, everything

they are trying to ignore, the grayed promise of government, twenty-five floors

of lying windows, of peeling grates called balconies, of yellow panties

and shredded diapers fluttering from open windows, of them nasty girls

with wide avenue hips stomping doubledutch in the concrete courtyard,

spewing their woman verses, too fueled and irreversible to be not

listened to and wiggled against, and the Madison Street bus revs its tired

engine, backs up a little for traction and drives smoothly into the sweaty

space between their legs, the only route out of the day we’re riding through.