The signs taped to the windows say
something to this effect: _we're closed;
we're on vacation for the next
two weeks--no seriously--we are._
Except it's been five weeks since they
were scheduled to re-open--what
is up with that? My friends and I
miss the two-dollar bottled beers
on Thursday nights, and since I live
the closest to the place, they seem to think
that somehow, I know something that they don't.
II. Broadway and
the Alley Just South of Surf,
Chicago, August 19, 1998
Walking north on Broadway I
passed by what used to be a bar
called Alcazar, where I'd done coke
in the back room on more than one
occasion eight long years ago.
Before then, gypsies lived there who,
I heard, have jinxed the property
because no business has survived
there since they "left." Developers
have built a new brick edifice on top
of what I think is still a cursed lot.
III.
Ronny's Obituary
A friend was in from out of town,
his first trip to Chicago, so
we went downtown so he could see--
not eat at--Ronny's Steak Palace,
the dining room of which was quite
a visual feast: red walls adorned
with paintings of Henry the Eighth
and other men of history,
depicted carving up all kinds
of meat. But from a block away, I saw
a pile of rubble stood in Ronny's place.
"Arrangement in Haiku"
The warm, plush body
he woke next to wasn't his
wife's; it was the cat's,
whose breath, visible
in the steady crescendo
and decrescendo
of fur, whose purring
was a drum roll ascending
to the cymbal crash
of a dish, dropped, and
his wife cursing, then, "Get up!
Now! We're running late!"
Another Monday
morning in the junior high
band director's house.