Summer 2019: Chicago Wilderness

Are people still leaving
Are they still stuck
What are they doing to our schools
Why isn’t my recycling recycled
There was a skunk in my neighborhood
last week and I do truly
love their smell truly I do
It would be wrong to mail human shit
to Trump Tower
counterproductive
maybe a Dreamer
would have to clean it up
16 red stars between
two thin blue lines
Traffic report tells
you where the protest is at
The monarchs still pass through
en route to Canada and Mexico
they’d shit on the wall
If we are to be saved
It’ll be by
Chance
The Fort Dearborn Massacre
was ostensibly because
the white people destroyed
their guns on their way out of town
instead of giving
them to the Potawatomi
like they promised
What do you
call a gift white people
promise but never deliver
I can tell you where to find
the first wild turkey seen
in the city in decades
It’s hanging out where
Aagje and Jan Ton hid freedom
seekers at their underground
railroad farm passing
through en route to Canada
The only flower from Chicago
and found nowhere else on Earth
hasn’t been seen
in over a century
only ever seen at 119th and Torrence
it’s a tiny ghost named Thismia americana
and I know for a fact
it’s still out there somewhere
hundreds, wild
I know they’re still there
underground
waiting
till we deserve them again.