chicago, a parable

I had the strangest dream, the junkheap sighs, settling into night. Its blood is hustler’s blood, old and trod deep into stockyards and squares; its breath wheezes through the subway tunnels, carrying the smell of ashes, old fires. I dreamed I was a city.

the prairie says nothing, crawling up between the cracked blacktop of abandoned lots and back-alleys, all those places in the vasty sweep where the old-world villages do not crowd so hard one upon the other.

a weary breeze wanders out of some bar or other, tours Cottage Grove idly awhile, then turns, aimlessly as ever, west down the Midway. The junkheap turns over, and sleeps.