CHICAGO
now blurred the loop under the El
and the forbidden shoreline.
meet you at the German restaurant
I loved in 1950, I will bring the soapstone carving
the Mafia gave me for blundering into their meeting
(school uniform blouse and skirt
eyes and mouth wide)
scary but not in the mood that day
to eat children, the gift.
I was old enough to feel something
but not to know.
Chicago I can not forget
the my-age bully who roughed me up twice
he’s a used car dealer in Peoria, Google says.
I am sure he cheats people
and laughs as they drive away in their tinny beaters.
and all the cows in the shop windows, when I went back
maybe it was the year of the cow, even grown up
I did not understand
why all the cows in Chicago, what they meant.
meet me there, I even remember its name.
The Berghoff. you had wiener schnitzel
and I had sausages.
after we’ll go to the Museum
of Science and Industry—the telephone display,
those chains lighting up
all over the world.
PATHETIQUE
he leans into the memory,
piano music from a distance source,
leaning too into the other
vibrations of forgetting
into the minor key of diminution
a black bird alone on an old-fashioned
telephone pole with blue glass
wind blowing through the abandoned barn
ghosts in blue dresses
the smell of the farm in the past
horse-dung and the fragrance of hay
the notes die away
he holds something silver in his hands
POWERLESSPOINT
The speaker said the toddler in his video
Kept pushing images on the magazine cover,
Thinking they were icons that did not work.
This was supposed to instruct those of us
Gathered there in the stuffy conference room
Where the technology had inexplicably quit,
So the speaker had to talk about his project,
Flash drive in his pocket, and draw
Lumpy circles with chalk. We are supposed to teach
Not the children we were, he said, jabbing at us
With the chalk—we who devoured books
Sometimes literally, Patting the Bunny until
It was bald, leaning into the page till words
Jumped into our minds. Our duty now is to teach
This strange toddler no one could quite see
(because of the lack of picture and of sound)
But who did not think of words as they were for us
Who read hours into the dark. New methods he said,
New ways to reach the new child, for a mind
Of touch, of flipping images, half-words that dwindle
To a point, a sound, even a twitch or shrug,
And cast no light from a diminished page.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Journals publishing Janet McCann’s work include Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou’wester, America, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, New York Quarterly, Tendril, and others. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she taught at Texas A & M University from 1969 until 2015, is now Professor Emerita. She has written three poetry books and six chapbooks. Her most recent poetry book: The Crone at The Casino (Lamar University Press, 2014). She lives in College Station, Texas with her dogs, Marple and Poirot.
Image generated on Magic Studio
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