Kristy Odelius (Chicago, USA): from The Virgins of Chicago

THE VIRGINS OF CHICAGO

The gold lunette just beyond the glass,
the cord, the snag, my lariat mind.
With magazines, we let fly like
magdalenes sweeping the stairs. Cassocks
frame damp faces behind the weather.

Slowly through a permissive sky,
an incident, a scar— stars disarticulate
from mud-spattered sails. The billowing
rings in a cell phone ditty, outfitted,
cheeked, sleeping their clarity. Mediums
slung across beds— daughters, madams,
divas feeling it— the Sapphic elastic.

Precursor to this disarming blue
dawn, red in the bent light of fever-
flower gossip. They wake up walking,
the virgins of Chicago, the rhetoric
in their step says fuck the folio.


THE VIRGINS OF CHICAGO

Where businessmen like to stand
in their underwear, late-night
kites cascade between the heads
of tourists. Each alone and gentle,
uniquely sad, oh that disappointing
brunch on the esplanade.

Instead, I window the Hyatt.
In my drawing a woman
stands kabuki-neat, holding
a cell phone, poised in red
on a man-hole cover.

© Kristy Odelius 2007