Chicago 6 Corners

My Cobalt Railroad Hammock

Erika Dickerson, January, 4, 2008

Never loved dirty windows
Slightly glistening self portraits
With backdrops of
Route maps
Never used.

Monadnoc: Dog Mason (A Review)

Michael Haeflinger, August 31, 2007

A Life in Misery: Dog Mason: Spoken Word Recordings

Rearview Mirror

Toni Asante Lightfoot, August 23, 2007

A loud dark laugh greets my jokes
I am stunned to see what a fine
man is attached to it.

Maxwell Street

Adam Gottlieb, August, 16, 2007

This is the poem the blood in my hands has been waiting to write since my last yiddish-speaking grandparent died.

Smiles

Joshua Williams, July 25, 2007

We trade candid smiles at the bistro
You, I and puppy love
Scrape our palms against faith
Ante up on luck
But puppy love has us covered

He manages our past debts
Love left with Pluto

He makes us put up a fight
Passion stained wilderness

He manufactures our imagination
Scandal on white flags

You, I, puppy love
Smiles deprived of laughter

Zack

José Olivarez, May 29, 2007

Zack was first whiteboy
I ever trusted.
Met him in the third grade.
You can’t be
a wigger in third grade,
but Zack was first whiteboy
my mom refused
to let me befriend.
My mom didn’t have
a problem with white people.
She prayed to a white blue-eyed
Jesus, and told me to get
a white girl to take care of me.

Letter

Amy Jirek, May 29, 2007

I left in January and head back east, happily because
I was tired of being alone. There. And while it was only
one week, it was a bad week, a long week. I missed home
but I wasn’t going back there. It felt too much like vacation
now and I just didn’t belong in that town anymore at twenty-one. Twenty-one,
my dad thinks it’s still young. I think that it’s five years past turning sixteen
that seemed to happen in five minutes. But that’s beside the point. I miss you.
I left too quickly and for the week I was there I was almost
someone else. I didn’t want it to be that way.
Too late. The next days were long and I continued to analyze again
and again what might have been. But what a waste
of time. Every morning I still smell the rustic scent—that mixture
of sweat and cologne and saltwater. I miss the weather too—
but who cares. Everyone misses the weather. But I see tshirts
sometimes, and street signs, faded jeans and thunderstorms,
and I hear songs and voices—and sometimes even
half- familiar laughs and for a small part of a second
I feel like you’re here