There are the lawn bowlers, drunk and shouting at one another in a different language, a language full of pitched staccatos and the punctuation of wild gestures. (For a comma, the hand comes straight down. A period is a fist to the open palm, and for an exclamation point, the most common of punctuation here, it's burly, hairy arms everywhere.) This is not their Chicago. They piss on the trees, not caring who sees them. They smoke cigarettes one after another, flicking still burning butt-ends to the fence and lighting up the next before the glow is off the first. They drink and bowl and shout until long after the lights of the city are gone, long after the once-blazing skyline in the distance has been extinguished.
2009