Wet Rail: A Collage
by Peter Zelchenko
October 9, 2009
Rain flushes down the El car's rear windows whenever we accelerate
We are not fast, but we are speed
That Sandburg Village, immortal buffer zone, looms over the haze.
Cold, concrete majesty
Dwelling divine majority
Selective souls' monotony
"Come show me another city with (Sorry, Carl, but Hizzoner, a Hamburglar, named a half-mile wall of intolerance after you.)
Somber girders as we go Yes, there is grey beauty here: "Now rivers fold their arms round my Manhattan. (What made New York or San Francisco or Paris so romantic, Mama? This train pauses, teetering atop Wells Street Bridge Perched three layers high For one frozen moment I examined my own river, being peppered by rain. As we now lurch away, (Grateful nods to Dave Eggers, Carl Sandburg, Emily Dickinson, Karl Shapiro, Alex Kotlowitz, Ezra Pound, and, er, Mommy. Jeez, is there anything original up there? Incidentally, read of Sandburg's concerns, and his poem. Only rain from on high stopped the 1919 race riots that Sandburg studied. They really ought to re-name that place.)
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lifted head singing so proud
to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning..."
Large and composed
Creosote beams
Amphibian trees
Project rubble
Never so real
Never so rude:
Let their torrents flow from icy faucets long untapped..."
Something we lack? Why have you never really been here?)
Awaiting permission to enter
From this wet, black iron track,
My eye praises
the waters of Chicago shiver there below
under a cold
and downtown
afternoon.