Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Southside cadences move easy
through the city, walk
kool everyone
uptight.
             Old
homes, trees, action
on 53rd street.

The power now is North is white is
vertical, will
crumble. Indiana
industry
will cease. Southside
must cohere.

East 73rd
West 18th
                 push back to what the city was
when there was a cow
could wander.

The lake is blue as alewives' eyes
staring
at us from the shore
be it Duneside east of Gary
or on Lake Shore Drive, Park Slope West.

The language of
America's middle —
An assimilation without the knowledge via
European pansexual signs.
 
So alewives dead of industry stink
& random fear of random death or maiming
stays the city fathers.

At Casa Aztalan
the people probe for weakness to exploit —
not for power's sake alone but simply to survive.

As now from the porch I see
A lady's legs, hand touches knee, legs
Crossed, feet
bare, black
strap of her wristwatch, face
hidden       behind the spreading leaves.
Her hand again to her leg goes.
The sound of a plane overhead.
Sun.   Breeze.   Bird song.
Encased in air I am, locked into
City rhythms which of themselves
Are rural yearnings,
Remnants.

There are streets down here so I'm told
Which one must not walk alone at night.
The fear is everywhere. It is necessary
To spread it, thus
Keep the people down, keep
The lid on.
                     As it came off in '68
& Chicago just now beginning to recover.

The only place I felt the fear
Was Northside, street named Broadway
As if some New Yorker's antic sense of life
Could not resist.
                                A bar I was taken to
And could not get a beer at, so clumsy was I
Acknowledging the vibes the signs
Put out in fear, in hate, in sexual pain.

I must leave Chicago.
'Southside ain't no place for a white man.'

City of the big shoulders you were named.
He did not live to see how the slump is carried
On the shoulders of those who choose to stay and fight.

The temple of Muhammad, the Shabazz pie,
The glory of a culture within the non-culture
Which is Daley's Chicago, city
Of dead alewives on the shore of Lake Michigan.
City of good parks.
City where cries of birds are shattered by jets' roar.
City where dogs must be leashed.
City of cold trains and honky-tonk.
Hip City (like Desmond's) where the street rap is fast as
Manahatta!
 
                  Provincial Chicago,
You of the last stop on the underground rails,
I address you as the living entity Sandburg saw
Which brings out the seeds of Whitman in us!