I clicked my tongue at your last week,
pregnant woman with glass tube ablaze
in the alley below my apartment window;
belly fat with cheated life, misguided intentions,
the Christian Right and that gray fog. You scattered
like a bug when I wanted you to go away,
when I couldn’t stand to look at you anymore-
when I couldn’t stand my own inertia.
I thought of the dead pigeon last winter
whose feet were stuck in a frozen puddle,
standing erect, the walking dead. I felt the bird deep
in my stomach as I felt you last week. For a moment,
you and Chicago were one again as two breaths-
one warm, one cool, exhaled into the still summer air.